Laura Bow

The Colonel’s Bequest: a bold experiment with the interactive mystery format

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Roberta Williams is regarded as the First Lady of adventure games with very good reason: her King’s Quest series was instrumental in bringing the genre out of the purely text-based realm, and her other work helped play a leading role in continually evolving the genre.

One of her games has had markedly less attention over the years, though, and that’s a real shame, because it’s probably one of her most interesting, experimental titles. I refer to The Colonel’s Bequest, the first of the short-lived Laura Bow series, which first released in 1989 for MS-DOS PC, and which was ported to Atari ST and Amiga in 1990.

The Colonel’s Bequest is not a perfect game. Not by a long shot. But it most certainly is an interesting game. So we’re going to take a closer look at that today. Hit the jump to find out more.

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Spirit Hunter

Death Mark II: an exceptional conclusion to a brilliant series

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The Spirit Hunter series from Experience is an absolutely fantastic trilogy of games that anyone interested in Japanese-style horror — specifically ghost stories — should immediately purchase, play and love.

The first game, Death Mark, introduces us to the basic concept of the series: ridding the world of vengeful spirits by resolving their grudges. The second, NG, shows similar happenings in a completely different context, with an all-new cast of characters. The third game, Death Mark II, returns to the original cast (plus some new additions) for an all-new adventure — and, once again, it shakes things up quite significantly in terms of execution and structure.

Today we’re going to take a look at that latter — and, to date, final — adventure in the series. Hit the jump for more!

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One-Shots

A new taxonomy of RPGs

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I’ve been doing some thinking about things that don’t really matter — a welcome distraction from the unpleasant things that do matter in the world today — and one of the things that has come up in my addled brain is how the genre descriptor “RPG” is woefully inadequate to describe the incredibly broad range of experiences one can have beneath that banner.

So I thought it might be interesting to do a bit of a thought experiment and see if I can come up with some convincing descriptors for the various types of RPG out there. I feel like there’s quite a lot, but establishing some form of “taxonomy” for them might be useful to… someone, I guess?

Anyway, point is, I felt like doing this, so I’m doing it. Hit the jump and we’ll start pondering!

Final Fantasy VII
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Spirit Hunter

NG: Holding grudges is No Good

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One of the things I’ve come to really like about Experience as I play more of their games is how they can take the same basic concept and provide a completely different riff on it, rather than just taking the easy way out.

This can be seen in the dungeon crawlers they’re most famous for, which all vary in complexity, depth and unique mechanical wrinkles. But it’s also apparent in their Spirit Hunter series, which began with Death Mark and continues with the curiously named (and nigh-un-Googleable) NG.

While both games share the same idea of hunting restless spirits and either destroying them or resolving their grudges, the execution and vibe of the two games feel very different from one another. So we’re going to take a look at the latter after the jump.

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Spirit Hunter

Death Mark: ghost stories, J-style

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I enjoy a good horror game, but over the years it will surely not surprise you to learn that I’ve developed a particular taste for the distinctively Japanese take on the genre.

That means while memey western jumpscare games leave me cold, you throw me into the mix with some Japanese folklore-inspired ghost stories and I’ll have a thoroughly lovely time. I first developed a taste for this back when I first played Project Zero (aka Fatal Frame), and while Death Mark isn’t exactly the same sort of game as those absolute classics, it’s definitely coming from a similar place in narrative terms.

That means while there most certainly will be scary monsters of all shapes and sizes, they all have a story behind them. And that’s where Death Mark particularly shines. So let’s take a closer look!

Some NSFW imagery ahead (gore and suggestive). You have been warned!

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PlayStation 5

Silent Hill 2: A respectful remake

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Silent Hill 2 on PlayStation 2 is one of my favourite games of all time. It’s an absolute masterpiece of games as art, and a game that I have returned to numerous times over the years.

But it’s quite old now — I regret to inform those of you as old as I am that at the time of writing, it is 23 years old, in fact — and thus it’s actually quite reasonable to assume that there are some newer game fans who will not have encountered it before, particularly as attempts to rerelease it on later platforms have had various troubles.

As such, the prospect of a modern remake was both exciting and worrying. Would Bloober Team, a Polish developer whose previous horror game output had had a somewhat mixed reception, be able to do justice to this all-time classic? Did Silent Hill 2 need “remaking” in the first place? Or should I just content myself with the PlayStation 2 version? Read on and find out.

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.hack

.hack//INFECTION and the beginning of a phenomenon

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I’ve always been fascinated by the .hack games, one of the first truly ambitious transmedia projects that involved video games, and yet I’ve never gotten around to finishing the original series. I decided it was high time I corrected that.

For the unfamiliar, .hack (pronounced “dothack”) is a Japanese franchise that encompasses video games, animation, manga and light novels. It began in 2002 with two distinct pieces of media: the video game .hack//INFECTION, which is what we’ll be talking about today, and .hack//SIGN, an anime series that, at the time of writing, I haven’t yet seen.

The project involved something of an all-star cast of Japanese talent, including anime director Kouichi Mashimo from studio Bee Train, Ghost in the Shell writer Kazunori Itou, and Gainax co-founder and Neon Genesis Evangelion character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. Definitely quite the pedigree, then — so let’s take a closer look at the first interactive episode in this saga after the jump.

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Racers

Victory Heat Rally: the return of the Super Scaler

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I love a classic “Super Scaler” game, so when Victory Heat Rally by Skydevilpalm, published by Playtonic Friends, claimed to offer a “turbocharged neo Super Scaler arcade racing experience”, I was immediately interested. And that interest solidified when I played the game’s demo during a recent Steam Next Fest.

Now, the full game is finally here, and it’s a wonderful thing. Offering easy to pick up but hard to master arcade racing action, Victory Heat Rally is a beautiful example of a “modern retro” game: unmistakably inspired by classics of years gone by, but also incorporating features made possible by today’s gaming hardware.

If you’ve ever enjoyed games like Sega’s Power Drift or the ever-reliable Mario Kart series, Victory Heat Rally is a game that should definitely be on your radar. So let’s take a closer look after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Paint the town blue with Paint Chase

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So far in UFO 50 we’ve seen two very different takes on the platformer, including a classic microcomputer-style “arcade adventure” and an auto-scrolling arcade game, plus a surprisingly deep but simple to understand deckbuilding strategy game. What’s next?

Well, it’s time to tackle that mainstay of early ’80s video games, the maze chase game! Paint Chase blends ideas from Namco’s Pac-Man and Rally-X with a touch of underappreciated Atari 8-bit classic Preppie! II to create something fun and challenging that, like everything else in the compilation, puts an original twist on an established formula.

Just four games into UFO 50 and we’ve already seen an incredibly diverse array of different gaming experiences… and there’s plenty more where that came from. But for now, let’s take a closer look at Paint Chase after the jump.

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UFO 50

UFO 50: Ninpek’s epic quest for a sandwich

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You know sometimes how after a hard day’s ninjing you really want a sandwich? And when you sit down to enjoy it, and you’re anticipating that first amazing bite… a giant octopus comes along and steals your sandwich? That’s Ninpek, the third game in UFO 50.

Released in 1983 and once again developed by the dynamic trio of Benedikt Chun, Gerry Smolski and Thorson Petter, according to the history of the fictional LX console, Ninpek was a game put out to coincide with the wave of “Ninjamania” that was sweeping the world at the time. This was very much a real thing; popular entertainment — not just video games — was absolutely riddled with ninjas throughout the 1980s, and the obsession lasted quite some time.

Ninpek would have fit right in to that trend. Drawing strong influences from auto-scrolling platform shooters such as Capcom’s SonSon (released in 1984 in the real world) and SNK’s Psycho Soldier from 1987, it’s a challenging, arcade-style affair that will enthral and infuriate in roughly equal measure. Let’s take a closer look after the jump.

ninpek_2024-09-22-19h25m54s497
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The best of overlooked and underappreciated computer and video games, from yesterday and today.