Category Archives: short;Play

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short;Play: Mighty Gunvolt Burst

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Inti Creates, as you’ll know if you’ve read my feature on them, read my many words on Gal*Gun Double Peace and Gal*Gun 2, and listened to our Inti-centric podcast episode, make fantastic games.

One of my favourite games of theirs that doesn’t haveΒ Gal*GunΒ in the title isΒ Mighty Gunvolt Burst,Β a game which is essentially nothing but Inti Creates fanservice. Dripping with the “enhanced retro” aesthetic the team are such masters of, this is a challenging platform adventure with satisfying progression mechanics.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

short;Play, Videos

short;Play: Heretic

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It’s often a good idea to revisit games that were dismissed for one reason or another back when they were originally released; they’re often great experiences in their own right.

Raven Software’sΒ HereticΒ is a great example; while it didn’t exactly receive aΒ negativeΒ reception per se, it was considered to be little more than aΒ DoomΒ clone by many people, despite the innovations it added to the mix. Revisit it today, divorced of that original context, and you’ll find there’s lots to enjoy — and there are many more games like this out there!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.

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short;Play: Dungeons and Dragons Heroes

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Brenda Romero’s gonna make you her bitch! Well, probably not, but she did design this game — and a very solid, enjoyable action RPG it is, too. She made several Wizardry games, don’tcha know.

Dungeons and Dragons HeroesΒ was an exclusive title for the original Xbox, and offers hack-and-slash action loosely based on the then-newΒ Dungeons and DragonsΒ Third Edition ruleset for up to four players. There’s drop-in, drop-out local multiplayer, multiple difficulty modes and hordes of enemies to fight. Sounds good to me!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Tokyo Highway Challenge

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Tokyo Highway Challenge for Dreamcast is an interesting game, as we’ve previously talked about. On paper, it sounds like it should be really boring — all you do is race around the same stretch of Tokyo highway night after night after night — but in practice, it’s a really enjoyable and interesting twist on the racer genre.

At least part of this is due to its unusual race structure, which takes some cues from fighting games, of all things. Rather than simply beating your opponent to a set destination, you need to defeat them by emptying their “Speed Points” bar. You achieve this by staying in front of them and, essentially, proving your superiority at this whole racing thing.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Rise of the Dragon

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Adventure games — particularly point-and-click affairs from the ’90s — are a genre I’ve loved for a long time. And one of my all-time favourites from back in the day is Rise of the Dragon, a futuristic dystopian adventure by Dynamix that feels all the more plausible today.

Taking on the role of William “Blade” Hunter, trenchcoat-wearing private detective extraordinaire, it’s your job to investigate the strange and horrifying death of the mayor’s daughter, stop the spread of a deadly DNA-altering drug and prevent the resurrection of an ancient Chinese wizard who really wants to take over Los Angeles for some reason. I say he’s welcome to it; LA’s a shithole now, and it looks even worse in the future.

Check out my full playthrough of this adventure game classic in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Tee Off

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If you’re unfamiliar with various takes on sports games over the years, you might not think that “arcade-style” is a descriptor one could readily associate with golf titles.

But there have been numerous great examples of top-notch arcade-style golf games throughout gaming history. And one of my absolute favourites of all time isΒ Tee Off,Β a game put together by little-known Japanese dev Bottom Up and published by Acclaim. Not only is it a super-fun golf game, it has a fantastic soundtrack that sounds like something out ofΒ Sonic Adventure,Β as well as a full-on second game mode based on “gate ball”, or Japanese croquet.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Fractalus

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Rescue on Fractalus is one of my all-time favourite games, so I was tremendously excited to hear that a remake that has been ten years in development finally reached its 1.0 release the other day.

At the same time, I was a little skeptical; could a modern reimagining of a classic 8-bit game, deliberately built within the constraints of technology of the time (albeit using some real bleeding-edge programming techniques) really match up to its inspiration? Only one way to find out, isn’t there? Well, maybe two; you can also download it for yourself for free at the official site.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Dead Rising

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We’ve been in the “HD era” for a while now — so long, in fact, that titles from the early days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 probably count as being “retro”.

An all-time classic from this early period — a dark time when developers apparently didn’t know what VSync was — was Capcom’sΒ Dead Rising,Β an ambitious quasi-open world affair that saw you battering your way through hordes of zombies in an attempt to solve the mysterious outbreak in a sleepy Colorado town. There are better ways to play this today, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the original Xbox 360 version — particularly with how cheaply you can acquire a copy today.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: Warriors Orochi 2

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Now I’m starting to explore Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, here’s a brief look at the game we’ve just left behind: Warriors Orochi 2.

Warriors Orochi 2Β was received fairly poorly in the West, largely because the West doesn’t really know how to reviewΒ WarriorsΒ games — but also because at first glance, it seemsΒ veryΒ similar to the firstΒ Warriors Orochi. Delve into it a little deeper, though, and you’ll find an interesting character progression system that can devour a significant chunk of your life if you let it!

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!

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short;Play: TimeSplitters 2

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You asked for it, and I… was going to do it anyway, but here it is! TimeSplitters 2, one of the finest console first-person shooters ever created — and indeed one of my favourite games of all time.

TimeSplitters 2Β took everything that was good about the first game and provided more.Β Much, much more. We have a story mode that is much closer to what its spiritual predecessorsΒ GoldenEyeΒ andΒ Perfect DarkΒ provided on the Nintendo 64. We have a more structured single-player experience for the “arcade” mode. We have a wide variety of weird and wonderful challenges. And we have many, many,Β manyΒ characters to collect.

Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!