Category Archives: One-Shots

One-off articles about games, cultural phenomena, anime and anything else that isn’t getting the Cover Game treatment.

One-Shots

The term “adventure game” no longer has any meaning

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Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always enjoyed adventure games — mostly those of the point-and-click variety, but I’m certainly not averse to those with text parsers, or which are entirely text.

Trouble is, these days it’s actually surprisingly (and annoyingly) difficult to track down genuine examples of these without also being confronted with a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with what you’re looking for. I made the mistake of clicking on a GamesRadar piece about “the 25 best adventure games to get swept up in right now” earlier — obvious SEO-optimised clickbait, in retrospect — and literally three out of the 25 games were actual adventure games.

The rest? Far Cry. Hogwarts Legacy. Batman: Arkham Asylum. Fucking Skyrim. Not only did the list completely lack any established classics of the adventure game genre that are easily accessible today — such as any of the old Sierra and LucasArts titles that are on Steam and/or GOG.com — but it also seemingly completely misunderstood what the term “adventure game” actually means.

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One-Shots

Class of ’09: of cynicism and sociopathy

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I’ve been a little leery of western-developed visual novels for a while now. I know that there are some genuinely good ones out there — but there are also a lot that play up the obnoxiously ironic, self-referential angle to such a degree that they’re hard to take seriously.

I’m not sure what made me think that Class of ’09, which describes itself as “the anti-visual novel” would be any different, but nonetheless something attracted me to it and made me think it might actually be worth a look. The fact it was £3 on sale at GOG.com helped, too, I must admit — even if it turned out to be complete horseshit, I would have spent less than the price of a cup of coffee on it.

Thankfully, it did not turn out to be complete horseshit. Nor, I’d argue, did it turn out to really be that which it described itself as. But it did turn out to be an enjoyable, worthwhile experience that I’m glad I spent four hours playing through. So let’s take a closer look at exactly why.

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One-Shots

Centerfold Squares: naughty gaming, 1988-style

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Dear reader, as I’m sure you’re aware from the vast number of games I’ve covered on this site to date, I am certainly not averse to a naughty game or two.

For a lot of the time these days, these are Japanese in origin (though the western-developed eroge and nukige scene has grown considerably since several large digital platforms opened themselves up to 18+ content), and people have become a lot more willing to openly talk about them. “Back in the day”, though, erotic games were a relatively unusual sight — and when they did come up, they often tended to be talked about in a rather dismissive way by the press of the period, particularly here in the UK. Some things never change, eh?

They did exist, though, and one that I’ve only recently got around to trying for the first time is Artworx’s Centerfold Squares (aka Centrefold Squares in Europe, because British English), a 1988 release for Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS PC. Because I am an Atari boy, today’s exploration will be focusing on the ST version, but all three versions are broadly pretty similar.

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One-Shots, Switch

A comprehensive review of Mary Skelter 2 after spending almost exactly 100 hours completing it

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One of the nice things about having your own website is that you can take your time over things you want to write about rather than rushing through them in order to meet a deadline. And I knew as soon as I started Mary Skelter 2 that I wanted to take my time over it.

100 hours of gameplay later, and I’ve finally beaten it. So I think it’s time that we talked about it in great detail. Because whew, there is a lot to talk about, and I’m certain that I’m going to miss at least a few things that struck me along the way. (I reserve the right to add to this piece as I think of things!)

I know I’ve written a few pieces about this game already, but I intend this piece to be a full, summative roundup of my experiences with the game and my overall thoughts on it. So let us begin.

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One-Shots, Racers

Fuel: criminally overlooked open-world racing

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I have mixed feelings about the open-world approach a lot of games take these days, but one genre where I feel it almost always works well is the racing game.

When you have a game whose main purpose for existence is to allow you to take yourself on a thrill ride (or, in the case of more sedate simulators, a comfortable excursion) it makes perfect sense to provide the player with as much freedom as possible.

After all, what’s the point of giving you access to interesting, exotic and, more often than not, downright dangerous vehicles if you can’t really put them to the test?

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One-Shots

Super Hang-On and its two very different ways to play

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I must confess, I never played Hang-On or Super Hang-On a great deal back in the day; I always found motorcycles a little less interesting than cars, and the games always struck me as “the Sega racers that weren’t quite as good as OutRun”.

I recently picked up Super Hang-On for Mega Drive, though, and after an evening of playing pretty solidly, it was hard not to come to the conclusion that I’ve been missing out for all these years.

This is an excellent 16-bit racer, particularly in its home console incarnation, and I’m very glad I’ve finally added it to my collection.

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One-Shots

Two Point Campus and the management sim as imaginative play

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I am, as I have spoken about numerous times previously, not good at strategy games with a competitive component. But I have always enjoyed a distinct offshoot of the strategic genre: the management sim, in which you tend to mostly be competing against “yourself”.

Ever since I first played SimCity on Super NES — a game that I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy when I first got it for Christmas as a kid, but which I ended up loving — I’ve found great value from games where you get to “play God” to varying degrees, having the opportunity to express your creativity within the constraints of a set of game mechanics.

And the latest of these I’ve found myself having fun with is Sega’s Two Point Campus, the follow-up to their successful riff on Bullfrog’s Theme Hospital, Two Point Hospital.

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One-Shots

Castle of Illusion and the value of simple, short-form games

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For those following the ongoing saga of my gaming schedule, yesterday saw me break said schedule to go to Ikea with my wife.

I bought a new chair to go in my study, which contains all my retro consoles and computers, because I came to the conclusion that the “gamer chair” I picked up a while back (actually, my workplace at the time paid for it as part of working from home arrangements) actually wasn’t all that comfortable. And thus, given my renewed desire to enjoy my retro consoles, I thought it worthwhile to have something comfortable to sit on.

Naturally, having acquired a new chair in which to enjoy retro gaming action, it made sense to enjoy the remainder of the evening sitting in said chair enjoying retro gaming action. And I am happy to confirm that it is indeed very comfortable. So I call that a win. I also had a thoroughly pleasant couple of hours playing Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse on the Mega Drive in my new chair, so I also call that a win.

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One-Shots

The joy and despair of loving things that others don’t care for

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If you’ve been reading MoeGamer or any of my other work for any length of time, you’ll know that I’m a strong believer that anyone should be able to enjoy what they want (assuming it’s not outright illegal or harmful) without fear of being shamed for it.

By extension, I also tend to believe that anyone who enjoys something should have the freedom to talk about the thing they enjoy — again, without fear of being shamed for it, and with others showing them at least some basic courtesy and understanding, even if they don’t share the same tastes.

It’s this latter bit that the world today seems to struggle with — and it’s an aspect of life that, with increasing frequency in the modern age, leaves me feeling desperately lonely and frustrated, even surrounded by these things I love so much.

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One-Shots

Idea Factory deserves your respect

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I am not a game designer.

I have attempted to make games at various points in the past, making use of toolsets ranging from Atari BASIC through STOS: The Game Creator, Klik & Play, The Games Factory, RPG Maker (of various flavours) and all manner of other things — but one thing has been constant: I’ve never gotten anything finished. And, as such, I have developed a good understanding of quite how much work goes into even the most seemingly simple project.

With that in mind, I always find myself gritting my teeth a bit any time I see people being unnecessarily disparaging about certain game developers. Whether it’s an entitled prick on Steam calling an indie dev “lazy” for not building their passion project to one ungrateful gamer’s specific expectations, or targeted campaigns of harassment against larger companies for one reason or another, I can never get behind that sort of behaviour.

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