Why is a game about dolphins so difficult?

It looks so great, though! Fast dolphin swimming, foreboding Genesis synth soundtrack, jumps and sonar blasting... this game is very unique and pretty badass. It's probably technically more of a puzzle game than an action game, so lots of folks were fooled into picking this up thinking they could just cruise around the ocean and blast sharks with sonar or whatever but really you had to solve tough and non-intuitive puzzles to find crystals, rescue other dolphins, and... travel to the future or space to fight aliens or something? This thing is wild.

Oh, I get it! It's because dolphins are so smart, so the game makers think players are some kind of super geniuses! Hint: They aren't.

Review from thedonproject.com

Can I get ripped and turn into a frickin' monster just by kicking wolves in the head? POWER UP!

Look, the motions are a bit wonky and everything feels kind of slow in this game. The graphics are fine most of the time and you got it for free with your early-version Genesis, so tons of people have definitely played this (or the arcade version). The transformation cutscenes are great, the digitized voices are somehow both funny and pretty good. I remember it being pretty tough to beat, but I've never been much of an action game expert.

You're definitely going to have to use your best late-80's imagination to fill in the awesomeness of this game, but it does a fair job of entertaining and is definitely worth a shot.

WELCOME TO YOUR DOOM!

Review from thedonproject.com

Unnnnnnggggghhhhh...

We had this game at our punk house for some reason. I think my housemate liked it a lot. Well, it is annoying. You just run around smashing things and having the game announcer yell his narration at you while the absolutely terrible sound effects play. I feel like this maybe was supposed to be a PS1 game or something? The graphics are poor and the game play, as mentioned, is annoying and repetitive. I guess there's, like, secrets and crap and maybe the 3-D view was sort of groundbreaking, but in general I'd probably never play this game again, if given the opportunity.

Crystal noise.

Review from thedonproject.com

I'm going to be honest: I couldn't remember which FIFA's I played on PS2, so I can't guarantee I've ever actually played this.

I'm pretty sure I didn't play any of the early versions of FIFA, but the ones after this also look different than I remember. The gameplay of this one looks familiar and the announcers are the ones I think I remember... I don't know, these games are basically all the same until they drastically change the controls later in the series. '04 makes some big graphical changes and is more of the incremental improvements you'd expect from an EA Sports series. I mean, it was a pretty good marketing decision to get into sports games that you released every year with the new players and not many other changes, right?

Anyhow, the games are pretty fun and the real draw is getting to play your favorite team or players. The control and gameplay is fine and not too annoying, except when it is!

Sports!

Review from thedonproject.com

Nicky Grist!

CMR 3 was definitely my first extended experience with rally gaming. Fun fact: I've always used the sticks or even the D-pad on controllers to do racing games, even today! At any rate, Colin McRae Rally leans towards the arcade side of things and doesn't really have a career building mode or anything, just a championship or regular old rallies. It's good time and decent to play, although rally games have come a long way since then. This one has all the things you need: co-driver notes and some twisty roads. The car physics are... fine for the time, but a little ice-rinky and lacking a lot of feeling, which was fine for the day. The overall design and fun factor make this game potentially enjoyable even for non-rally fans.

6 left into caution jump into rally!

Review from thedonproject.com

Man, these Ace Combat games are pretty good...

A little bit of storyline with some pretty fun-to-play jet fighting? I'm up for it!

The graphics are pretty solid, player interface is very nice, sound is superb, storyline is kinda sweet, and generally it's a good game, doing a lot with the limitations of the PS2. However, the gameplay and physics are the star attraction to the whole series of Ace Combat games. They're enough to feel realistic while still being accessible to regular non-fighter-pilot folks. Flying around and shooting rockets when you hear the lock sound is awesome. Blasting ground targets is even satisfying. I'm surprised the US Airplane Dudes didn't license the engine and make it a recruiting game or something, honestly. I'm glad they didn't and the fantasy world you play in only uses real weapons and planes instead of real targets. That keeps the game generally enjoyable and worth a second look.

Good job Mobius 1!

Review from thedonproject.com

Another game in the blur of JRPG's I played in the early 90's.

I'm pretty sure this was a rental game in my youth and we didn't own this one. My goal as a young one was to play all the JRPG's on our consoles that I could and this game was... one of them. It looks generally a lot like your Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, but the battle menus look different and there are a number of advances to the genre, like tons of items and customization of the order of things and other menus. I don't have the nostalgia for this game like I do for the bigger JRPG's of the time, so... it's fine.

Fine.

Review from thedonproject.com

Wait, is this a horror series now?

FFIII has incredible graphics, but I recall much less of the game than I do for FFII or FFI. That might be because it is substantially weirder and moves the series out of straight fantasy and into the weird techno-fantasy world that most of modern day Final Fantasy fans know. The battle mechanics changed a bit with a new variant of the "Active Battle" system and, as mentioned, the graphics were at the peak of late-era 16 bit JRPG's, but there's just not the level of nostalgia for this one for me as there is with FFII and FFI.

Chocobos, though. I guess that's worth it!

Review from thedonproject.com

Oh dang, that awesome intro, am I right?

In my youth, I had a massive crush on JRPG's. Well, anything made by Squaresoft, really. The Final Fantasy series held my interest all the way until FFIX or FFX even though I never really understood the plot of a single one of them. I love turn-based battles, fantasy/sci-fi elements, and sweet, overpowering orchestral soundtracks, so I was hooked even if I didn't know what was going on. FFII (or IV in Japan, of course), has all my favorite elements, but playing it so many years later makes the game seem pretty slow-moving, but the battles are still fun and the game is generally still pretty great. Plus the fancy SNES graphics as you fly the airship around and the transitions between scenes and battles were a bump up from the hugely important NES debut. Overall, excellent.

And the final battle was great!

Review from thedonproject.com

Let's see, a game where you get to play a god and build towns of loyal followers as well as do a little light platforming as a knight or something with a sword and magic? Yes, please!

ActRaiser was definitely one of my favorite SNES games. Pretty sure I never owned it but just rented it from Hollywood Video several times. Dragon Warrior, also made by Enix, was one of my faves for the NES and a few of the callbacks to that JRPG style but in an action RPG/sim/platformer mix was entrancing. It's like a Castlevania/Sim-City mashup with the added benefit of god-like powers. Incredible.



The soundtrack absolutely rules with orchestral tunes, angelic melodies, and baroque-sounding vaguely-hymn-like jams. The graphics are classic 16-bit goodness with a couple Mode-7 tricks for funsies. Balanced difficulty and a decent pace made it fun and appropriately challenging for middle-school me.

Fantastic.

Review from thedonproject.com

I know very little about Pocket Monsters, alright?

So, when I was working for Nintendo as a tester, I played this game for exactly one shift near the end of development. I had never played a Pokemon game before and I am pretty sure this game made it so I never played a Pokemon game again. It is definitely not the way to be introduced to the Pokemon world. I can remember early in the day wondering what the hell was going on and how the rules even worked. I did learn that Snorlax was my favorite because it was ridiculous to just have a character that fell asleep as a power. Anyways, I didn't log any bugs that day, for sure.

Anyhow, gameplay is sort of your standard JRPG turn-based fighting scenario with the monsters from your collection that you choose to bring? The plot seems to be... that you are in a competition of some kind? The graphics are fine, I guess, and the music is solid Nintendo style but not super memorable unless you play for 9 hours. I just needed something more to get me into this game when I wasn't paid to play it, and this version of Pokemon did not do the trick. It was clearly an add-on peripheral for a game series that you had to like first before you got this game. Maybe a way to get Pokemon fanatics to buy more stuff, I suppose. Well, that tactic was not super-effective on me (see what I did there?).

Pika!

Review from thedonproject.com

I was on the localization testing team for this. For one day.

While I was on the testing team for this game, I learned a fun gamer trick. If you're trying to do a mini-game where you have to smash the button as fast as possible, get yourself a cheap ballpoint pen. Lay that pen on the N64 controller button you're about to smash. Then, roll it back and forth over the button while pressing down and you'll smash that button faster than you've ever smashed before. Fun trick, right?

Basically, Mario Party is a board game turned into a video game and filled with mini-games. The games are pretty fun, definitely when you play with a group of friends, if you have enough controllers... and friends. I spent the day testing the multiplayer mode near the end of testing, so we didn't really find a lot of bugs, we just had a day of fun playing games with fellow testers. With that challenging group, it was definitely an accomplishment to win any mini games. It was a little weird to be competitive with my work colleagues on kind of a childish game, but once you get past the kid-level style, there's some "real" gaming to be done on this one. Don't let the style fool you!

And don't forget your pen!

Review from thedonproject.com

Of all the racing games I tested, this one gave me the most nightmares and physical pain.

Oh man, this game, folks. I think the Euro version was basically my first assignment at Nintendo and it was excruciating. It's not a completely terrible game if you like R.C. ProAm style 2-D racers, but just don't play it for 8 hours a day with regular-sized hands on the tiny Game Boy Color for basically minimum wage.

Probably the best feature of this game is the music in that classic Game Boy synth voice. But again, 8 hours a day of the music is A LOT. The race tracks are interesting enough, the Mario Kart-style power-ups/weapons are fine but not really varied enough, and the graphics are probably the best they could do on the underpowered GBC. The GBC limits the gameplay and "vision" of the track to a pretty small amount, so driving is actually pretty tough until you memorize the tracks, as the turn indicator is very late and very hard to notice at the top of the screen. I recall the controls being pretty bad too, or at least my fingers were indented with D-pad and button imprints for days afterwards. Ugh.

Rubbin' is racin'!

Review from thedonproject.com

You'd have to pay me to play this game again.

So, back around the turn of the century, I was employed by the Nintendo folks to do testing. It seems like a pretty sweet gig, but really, it's... fine. The game I spent the most of my temp, basically minimum wage time on was this little gem, F Zero: Maximum Velocity for the Game Boy Advance. The game itself is a fine, peppy Mario Kart clone with spaceships. Playing it on the GBA for 8 hours a day for a few weeks was pretty grueling, though and I remember my hands regretting my life choices more than a few times. The worst assignment was unlocking the Jet Vermilion ship the hard way: completing the championship 255 times! Since I had done some racing game testing in the past, I think they thought this would be fun or easy, but it was neither. The game itself is a decent amount of fun and has solid GBA graphics and a peppy soundtrack, but if I never play it again, I'll be fine with that.

Pro tip: maintain your momentum!

Review from thedonproject.com

Yeah, yeah, dysentery or whatever.

Everyone's favorite buffalo-murdering game about westward expansion. I mean it leaves a lot of the violence out that went along with the colonization of the U.S., but it was written by white folks, so what do you expect? There's also a question about what exactly you learned from the game...

As a game, though, it was sufficiently accessible and complex for even a single-digit aged youth like myself to get into. I vaguely remember the first time I had enough time in the lab to raft down the Columbia river and win. I definitely remember murdering excessive amounts of buffalo without worrying about the longevity of the species, just like colonizers did!

But that's really the question that bothers me about this game, what did kids learn?

They learned about RNG, for sure!

Review from thedonproject.com