fe17
1996
(This is the 120th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
I've officially gotten into the Big Three of id Software IPs. First there was Wolfenstein 3D, which built on lesser known Catacomb 3D to be the introduction to the FPS genre for some. Then came Doom, which was the introduction to the FPS genre for many. After that came Quake on June 22nd, 1996, which brings the genre to a whole new level.
I enjoyed them all over the past 12 months or so, none more though than Quake. For what on the surface might look like another Doom sequel, Quake does so many new things that spice up the entire experience. It introduces more puzzles, platforming and way more creative level design to the genre. As someone who mainly plays id Software FPS games through this challenge, it also lets you view up and down with the mouse for the first time in their history, which puts the icing on the cake.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
As per usual, the story is an afterthought for an id Software game. I mean, John Carmack famously said: "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not important". So it's actually a positive surprise that you get as much as you do I suppose.
Earth is invaded by an enemy code-named Quake (Shub-Niggurath). You need to find 4 runes to eventually find your way to Shub-Niggurath and kill it. The difference to Doom is its Lovecraftian theme and that these alien beings can jump through portals I guess, but you're not gonna be playing the game for the lore, or be disappointed if you do.
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
90's id Software FPS gameplay at its finest? I'm sure Doom vs Quake has been debated endlessly online, though I'd say both are very fine games in their own right. What makes Quake better for me is that it simply improves upon nearly everything over Doom from an objective standpoint. More enemy variety? Check. 3D objects over sprites? Check. Much more interesting and clever level design? Check.
The weapons are slightly different in Quake, and the weapons that both games share are balanced somewhat differently (like the shotgun, which I felt is weaker in Quake). Types of enemies are a bit different, music and theme are not the same either. So taste will play a role in these cases. But just based on what id Software was able to do with Quake in 96 versus with Doom in 93 from a technical standpoint just makes Quake a smoother, more modern experience that obviously resonated with me more in 2024.
Similarly to Doom, you enter a stage and need to kill enemies on your way to the exit. You gotta find keys hidden throughout the level to open locked doors in the meantime as well. The difference here is that id could do so much more that they couldn't with Doom 3 years earlier.
You can jump, you can platform, rooms can now be placed below rooms (exploring a river under a bridge in the first level as an example), secrets are not just moaning at every wall texture anymore but rather placed more intuitively, enemies are not just ranged threats anymore but also in melee thanks to enemy types like dogs, fiends and those horrible spawns, as well as others that have both ranged AND melee attacks combined.
Simultaneously, the most powerful weapon in the game, at least that's how I perceived it, are the rocket and grenade launchers (at least in terms of weapons that you regularly get ammo for). The trick with them is that they do significant damage, but when you're (not even all that) close to the enemy when they detonate, you take a lot of damage yourself. This means it's a high risk / high reward situation against all these enemies that rush you in the close quarter environments that Quake has, adding a strategic element to battles. Do I go quick and easy with these launchers but risk my own health, or do I go back to the shotgun and take them down slowly while opening myself up to more punishment from the enemy?
Vertical camera movement being possible also adds a lot here, though from what I understand it wasn't as smooth on MS-DOS back in the day as it is now. From a today standpoint, it's a fantastic addition of course.
On the face of it, it looks like a full 3D Doom with a visual upgrade, but all these additions make the gameplay experience much more smooth. Personally, I prefer this over Doom for sure, though Doom is still worth playing today as well.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
Sound effects sound solid, and the soundtrack is very good. Quake goes for ambient music mainly, which I found interesting, but it adds a lot to the atmosphere. It's not music you can listen to outside of playing the game, but I can already hear you say "the music has to fit the game, not your Spotify playlist you nerd" and you're very correct about that indeed. In that regard, Quake's OST is very good as I mentioned.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The jump to full 3D suits the game very well. Enemies look much scarier, environments much prettier and overall, levels and episodes are way more varied visually and thematically.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
The visuals and ambient music make for a great, dark atmosphere. The lighting effects for 96 are also pretty impressive and add to each level, especially whenever you see a dark room with a small, well-lit corner and a strong enemy standing right in there, staring at you menacingly. I'm still not sure whether to be disappointed by the reveal of Shub-Niggurath or impressed by what it means, but I think I'm going for the latter.
CONTENT | 10/10
Lots of content to indulge in here. A 7-8 hour main single player campaign over 4 episodes, multiple equally long expansion stories, plenty of weapons, power ups and enemy types to have fun with and I've read many times that Quake's multiplayer is supposedly fantastic, if you're interested in that. I'm sure it has an active mod community as well.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
Outside of very few individual levels, including the final one, the level design is just superb here. So many different environmental challenges, so much variety, so many secrets that can be found through simple exploration instead of wall spamming to unlock some random door and getting rewarded so many times for it makes for a grand time. Thematic differences in episodes adds to all this, really impressed.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Sure, it's yet another FPS by id Software, but it more than sufficiently brings the genre forward in great ways. Vertical camera movement, jumping, platforming, more clever puzzles, more exploration, more differently acting enemies etc. If I played this when it came out, I'd feel like I'm playing something familiar like I would have wanted, as well as feeling like I'm playing the next gen version of it, which is all, if not more than I would ask for.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
In the sense of replaying the main story, there is some incentive to do so in terms of finding more secrets, going through levels quicker and going for higher difficulties. In an overall sense, more campaigns and multiplayer obviously make this game endlessly replayable for the right player.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 83/100
1996 continues in strong fashion with Quake. My expectations for this game were definitely met and then some, and it's probably my favorite old school FPS after Half-Life now. It's a shame to read up on all the issues during the development of this, as well as the fallout, but all the more impressive that this was the end product of all that anyway. Going back to the starting days of the FPS genre and experiencing the growth has definitely been very enjoyable and if you're a fan of the genre I would definitely recommend you to do the same to gain a new appreciation for it all.
2014
(This is the 119th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
RESIDENT BACKTRACKERRRR. I loved playing Resident Evil, both because it was about time I finally played some more of this series and also because it just simply has a timeless survival horror gameplay loop. In what is obviously a subjective taste however, I can't say I was the biggest fan of the constant (!) backtracking required in this game. The classic door animations that play every time you enter a room, while they do add to the atmosphere (and kudos for designing all (?) of them individually), they also add on many minutes to your playthrough, possibly up to an hour or more. This makes backtracking even more of a hassle. It helps that everything you do in between that is fantastic, but I should mention it to anyone who is potentially reading this before thinking of playing the game.
I believe there is a mod though that removes the door animations, so if I ever do replay the game (which I'm confident I will), I would have to do it with the mod. Considering the game oozes with atmosphere even without the door animations, I would be OK with this decision, and maybe you too.
But I want to share more thoughts about the game (spoiler-free), so if you're interested, keep on reading. TLDR of it is above. Great game, backtracking makes it a bit of a chore depending on your stance towards it.
I also played the 2014 Resident Evil HD Remaster version, not the original 1996 version. I did that because I don't think all the backtracking plus tank controls would have been doable for someone with my patience. Having seen gameplay of the original, I do feel like it has its own vibe enough (in a good way) that I want to try that some time as well, but since the games are otherwise pretty much the same in all that matters, I chose the convenience of the most modern version of the game.
The original came out on March 22nd, 1996 for PlayStation, and later for Windows, Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS. It was especially fun to play this game because I had played Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark previously. It is well noted that the game's primary inspiration came from 1989's Sweet Home, but from personal experience, this game just felt like a well-refined and much more grand type of game that Alone in the Dark and Clock Tower were. All three of these games just feel like Escape Rooms that you slowly solve as you make your escape. And I just realized that all three play in a mansion. Were developers not allowed to go outside of mansions at this point in time? Or were mansions just seen as this creepy in pop culture in the 90s? I guess they still are perceived that way.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
You can choose to play as either Chris or Jill. Interesting: All three survival horror games I mentioned (AitD, Clock Tower and this) have a female main character.
The setting is like this: You are part of S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Service). It's 1998. A series of murders on the outskirts of Raccoon City (murdered people even getting eaten) got your departments Bravo Team sent to investigate. Contact to that team was lost, so your Alpha Team is sent in. You discover the site of their crashed helicopter, at which point you are attacked by a group of murderous dogs and run to safety. Safety at this moment is the creepy mansion in the distance.
I played as Jill (the easier of both choices), so Jill, Barry and Wesker made it to the mansion. Chris is missing. You go with Barry and Wesker heads off somewhere on his own. When you return to the rendezvous point, Wesker is missing and Barry (after stating how massive this mansion is), suggests splitting up. Amazing.
From here, you head off on your own and there are only sporadic appearances of Barry, Wesker, Chris and a bunch of side characters. The cool part is that you can get certain cutscenes depending on where you go at which point in time, and your actions and how quick you do things can impact whether some of them survive.
Other than this though, character development in the game is practically nonexistent and the story doesn't go anywhere outside of what nearly every gamer in the world knows anyway. There is a virus turning people into zombies.
Cutscenes are kept very short and most of the backstory is told through logs you find here and there. Whenever there are cutscenes, such as you finding Barry a bunch of times, you just listen to some of the WORST dialogue in video game history for 30 seconds, get given a nice gift and move on. Plot twists are not done very well, character motivations are questionable and it's all just hilariously bad. My favorites.
"What the hell is this thing?" "I found Kenneth killed by this thing." or
"Who would do this to him?" "I don't know, but I'm gonna find out what did this to him"
It's just the stiffest dialogue you could ever imagine. I didn't get tears from laughing, but the voice acting and dialogue might singlehandedly bring me to play the original, because I watched the opening of that and oh my god, that's just art right there.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
Again, outside of the issues of backtracking, I pretty much got no complaints. Well, outside of one. The issue is that these complaints go hand in hand and can be a pretty big deal depending on what kind of player you are.
That other point is Inventory Management. If you play as Jill, you have eight spots. Every item takes up one spot, outside of daggers and the stun gun. This means key items, literal keys and every weapon and ammo type uses up a space. The lighter and kerosene needed to light zombies on fire use up two spaces too. They are very useful but I never used them because I couldn't really afford to.
If you choose Chris, it's even worse: You only have six slots. Six! Include your handgun, ammo and a healing item and one key that you always have one you for 80% of the game and you only have two slots remaining. Find a healing item on your way? Great, now you can only pick up one key item and on you go to the storage room.
I think the inventory management part of the game has its merits, but I think this is a bit too excessive here. I don't know how Resi 2 and 3 handled it, but I imagine they came to the same conclusion and gave the player more space.
Outside of this, the game is pure survival horror fun. You are in this gigantic mansion, trapped and alone, and need to use your wits and your survival instincts to get out in one piece. There are many zombies to fight (or avoid, if you're smart), dozens and dozens of rooms to check, hundreds of key and resource items to find and many puzzles to solve. As you get more comfortable, thinking ahead and creating routes to destinations becomes important to avoid as many fights as possible and preserve that precious ammo. The loop is fantastic, and it works great.
As there are so many rooms, another big difficulty becomes figuring out where you saw certain things that you know you need to go to to put this key item in that you just found. Making notes will surely help, or really paying attention to where important looking things are. Playing this for an hour or two once a week might make progression even more difficult for this reason.
You can either use the new controls which lets you move around with only one restriction: When you aim, you can't move. Outside of that, you can turn on the spot and have lots of freedom, while the classic tank controls mean you gotta tuuuuuuurn to move the opposite way, which I'm sure is not all that fun.
Shooting is restrictive because when you aim, you can only point straight, up or down. Since headshots are very useful (you don't need to put zombies on fire if you incapacitate them), it's frustrating to not just be able to aim at their head. You need to let them get real close for upwards aim to do the trick, or be lucky and have a body shot trigger a headshot.
Puzzles are actually very straigthforward for almost the entire game and only very slightly cryptic, which is nice. You do think a little bit here and there but I never had any trouble.
Enemy types are on the lower end. Normal zombies are commonplace, but they turn into steroid-versions of themselves (don't remember the canon name) and get massive claws, if you don't incapacitate them in their normal zombie form or burn them after killing them normally. These stronger versions also take more damage to kill, making passing through their area a danger to both health and resources.
Then there are crows and wasps which you can mostly avoid, as well as dogs which are a pain in the butt (as per usual for enemy dogs in games). The game introduces some other enemies later on, but these are your primary opponents.
Overall, there is a great game here. The remake did clearly not change much about the gameplay loop here, which allows me to say that for 1996's standards, the loop feels really good and creative. For their first try at this, Capcom obviously therefore didn't perfectly balance everything out (in my opinion), and so I'm looking forward to see how that improves in the sequels, if Capcom felt the same way about this as me.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
There is mainly ambient music here, and it fits really well. There is different music playing for different rooms, and then there are many areas with no music and just you, the environmental sounds and your character's footsteps, which is an eerie silence that I always enjoy in games like these. Resident Evil does not have a soundtrack that a normal human being will listen to outside of this game, but within the game it is perfect.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I played the 2014 version, which has great background and environmental design to add a lot to all the locations you visit in the game. That's the most striking difference compared to the original (after the increased resolution of course) and while I prefer it, the simplicity of the original (which mainly has interactable objects as part of the background) has me very intrigued as well. Enemy design is very good and visuals overall look very good to this day. I can't say it couldn't profit from the modern Resi Remake treatment, but it will age very well in its current state too.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Horror games rarely ever scare me. If they accomplish this, it will be due to a jump scare or, like in this game's case, through great game design. This is truly survival horror, where you live on the edge of survival at all times. Limited resources, limited saves and lots (but not too many) of dangers. Each decision can be fatal, which is why I was on the edge of my seat throughout (and I played on EASY). Usually, I have enough ammo or have an auto save close enough to put me at ease, and while those games can accomplish dread just as well, Resident Evil is one of the earliest games to ever do it for me.
CONTENT | 9/10
The sheer volume of content in this game is impressive. You have your 15 hour normal playthrough. Then you have your second 15 hour playthrough with a different character and some different cutscenes, as well as a change in items. Jill has the lockpick, Chris has the lighter. Chris can take more hits but Jill gets a grenade launcher and improved shotgun. There is a clear easier route, but both worth playing. Then there are the different outcomes and endings based on who you manage to save.
The only issue with the content is that 15 hour playthroughs include about 5 hours of backtracking and door opening, which can drag down the experience depending on your preferences. That said, your second playthrough should be a few hours shorter since you know where to find everything at that point.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
They have done a great job at the survival horror gameplay loop, but I can't say I felt like the level design was perfect in this. I'd argue there are a few too many doors and a little too much backtracking with not enough interconnectivity in my opinion. Otherwise, great.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Resident Evil made survival horror mainstream and even helped bring zombies back to pop culture. This type of game was done before in a much simpler form, which keeps me from giving it a full 10, but the impact of Resident Evil cannot be understated.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Two characters, lots of different cutscenes and outcomes, and a number of challenge runs you are asked to do for 100% completion makes this a very replayable game. I mean look at this. Beat it in 5 hours, beat it in 3 hours, beat it with no saves, beat it with no saves ... I've got no chance, but for people who dare, this is great.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
Resident Evil is one of the best games I've played as part of this challenge and has rightfully started a major franchise that spread to a bunch of different media over the years. Not all done with the name ended up being good, but the original sure was. It made me realize that I truly do love survival horror, though I'm also not the biggest survival horror nut considering my thoughts about all the backtracking. A game that is a mix of this and Resident Evil 4's focus on action feels like it could be insane. Perhaps Resident Evil 2 Remake is that game, I will see soon enough.
RESIDENT BACKTRACKERRRR. I loved playing Resident Evil, both because it was about time I finally played some more of this series and also because it just simply has a timeless survival horror gameplay loop. In what is obviously a subjective taste however, I can't say I was the biggest fan of the constant (!) backtracking required in this game. The classic door animations that play every time you enter a room, while they do add to the atmosphere (and kudos for designing all (?) of them individually), they also add on many minutes to your playthrough, possibly up to an hour or more. This makes backtracking even more of a hassle. It helps that everything you do in between that is fantastic, but I should mention it to anyone who is potentially reading this before thinking of playing the game.
I believe there is a mod though that removes the door animations, so if I ever do replay the game (which I'm confident I will), I would have to do it with the mod. Considering the game oozes with atmosphere even without the door animations, I would be OK with this decision, and maybe you too.
But I want to share more thoughts about the game (spoiler-free), so if you're interested, keep on reading. TLDR of it is above. Great game, backtracking makes it a bit of a chore depending on your stance towards it.
I also played the 2014 Resident Evil HD Remaster version, not the original 1996 version. I did that because I don't think all the backtracking plus tank controls would have been doable for someone with my patience. Having seen gameplay of the original, I do feel like it has its own vibe enough (in a good way) that I want to try that some time as well, but since the games are otherwise pretty much the same in all that matters, I chose the convenience of the most modern version of the game.
The original came out on March 22nd, 1996 for PlayStation, and later for Windows, Sega Saturn and Nintendo DS. It was especially fun to play this game because I had played Clock Tower and Alone in the Dark previously. It is well noted that the game's primary inspiration came from 1989's Sweet Home, but from personal experience, this game just felt like a well-refined and much more grand type of game that Alone in the Dark and Clock Tower were. All three of these games just feel like Escape Rooms that you slowly solve as you make your escape. And I just realized that all three play in a mansion. Were developers not allowed to go outside of mansions at this point in time? Or were mansions just seen as this creepy in pop culture in the 90s? I guess they still are perceived that way.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
You can choose to play as either Chris or Jill. Interesting: All three survival horror games I mentioned (AitD, Clock Tower and this) have a female main character.
The setting is like this: You are part of S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics And Rescue Service). It's 1998. A series of murders on the outskirts of Raccoon City (murdered people even getting eaten) got your departments Bravo Team sent to investigate. Contact to that team was lost, so your Alpha Team is sent in. You discover the site of their crashed helicopter, at which point you are attacked by a group of murderous dogs and run to safety. Safety at this moment is the creepy mansion in the distance.
I played as Jill (the easier of both choices), so Jill, Barry and Wesker made it to the mansion. Chris is missing. You go with Barry and Wesker heads off somewhere on his own. When you return to the rendezvous point, Wesker is missing and Barry (after stating how massive this mansion is), suggests splitting up. Amazing.
From here, you head off on your own and there are only sporadic appearances of Barry, Wesker, Chris and a bunch of side characters. The cool part is that you can get certain cutscenes depending on where you go at which point in time, and your actions and how quick you do things can impact whether some of them survive.
Other than this though, character development in the game is practically nonexistent and the story doesn't go anywhere outside of what nearly every gamer in the world knows anyway. There is a virus turning people into zombies.
Cutscenes are kept very short and most of the backstory is told through logs you find here and there. Whenever there are cutscenes, such as you finding Barry a bunch of times, you just listen to some of the WORST dialogue in video game history for 30 seconds, get given a nice gift and move on. Plot twists are not done very well, character motivations are questionable and it's all just hilariously bad. My favorites.
"What the hell is this thing?" "I found Kenneth killed by this thing." or
"Who would do this to him?" "I don't know, but I'm gonna find out what did this to him"
It's just the stiffest dialogue you could ever imagine. I didn't get tears from laughing, but the voice acting and dialogue might singlehandedly bring me to play the original, because I watched the opening of that and oh my god, that's just art right there.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
Again, outside of the issues of backtracking, I pretty much got no complaints. Well, outside of one. The issue is that these complaints go hand in hand and can be a pretty big deal depending on what kind of player you are.
That other point is Inventory Management. If you play as Jill, you have eight spots. Every item takes up one spot, outside of daggers and the stun gun. This means key items, literal keys and every weapon and ammo type uses up a space. The lighter and kerosene needed to light zombies on fire use up two spaces too. They are very useful but I never used them because I couldn't really afford to.
If you choose Chris, it's even worse: You only have six slots. Six! Include your handgun, ammo and a healing item and one key that you always have one you for 80% of the game and you only have two slots remaining. Find a healing item on your way? Great, now you can only pick up one key item and on you go to the storage room.
I think the inventory management part of the game has its merits, but I think this is a bit too excessive here. I don't know how Resi 2 and 3 handled it, but I imagine they came to the same conclusion and gave the player more space.
Outside of this, the game is pure survival horror fun. You are in this gigantic mansion, trapped and alone, and need to use your wits and your survival instincts to get out in one piece. There are many zombies to fight (or avoid, if you're smart), dozens and dozens of rooms to check, hundreds of key and resource items to find and many puzzles to solve. As you get more comfortable, thinking ahead and creating routes to destinations becomes important to avoid as many fights as possible and preserve that precious ammo. The loop is fantastic, and it works great.
As there are so many rooms, another big difficulty becomes figuring out where you saw certain things that you know you need to go to to put this key item in that you just found. Making notes will surely help, or really paying attention to where important looking things are. Playing this for an hour or two once a week might make progression even more difficult for this reason.
You can either use the new controls which lets you move around with only one restriction: When you aim, you can't move. Outside of that, you can turn on the spot and have lots of freedom, while the classic tank controls mean you gotta tuuuuuuurn to move the opposite way, which I'm sure is not all that fun.
Shooting is restrictive because when you aim, you can only point straight, up or down. Since headshots are very useful (you don't need to put zombies on fire if you incapacitate them), it's frustrating to not just be able to aim at their head. You need to let them get real close for upwards aim to do the trick, or be lucky and have a body shot trigger a headshot.
Puzzles are actually very straigthforward for almost the entire game and only very slightly cryptic, which is nice. You do think a little bit here and there but I never had any trouble.
Enemy types are on the lower end. Normal zombies are commonplace, but they turn into steroid-versions of themselves (don't remember the canon name) and get massive claws, if you don't incapacitate them in their normal zombie form or burn them after killing them normally. These stronger versions also take more damage to kill, making passing through their area a danger to both health and resources.
Then there are crows and wasps which you can mostly avoid, as well as dogs which are a pain in the butt (as per usual for enemy dogs in games). The game introduces some other enemies later on, but these are your primary opponents.
Overall, there is a great game here. The remake did clearly not change much about the gameplay loop here, which allows me to say that for 1996's standards, the loop feels really good and creative. For their first try at this, Capcom obviously therefore didn't perfectly balance everything out (in my opinion), and so I'm looking forward to see how that improves in the sequels, if Capcom felt the same way about this as me.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
There is mainly ambient music here, and it fits really well. There is different music playing for different rooms, and then there are many areas with no music and just you, the environmental sounds and your character's footsteps, which is an eerie silence that I always enjoy in games like these. Resident Evil does not have a soundtrack that a normal human being will listen to outside of this game, but within the game it is perfect.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
I played the 2014 version, which has great background and environmental design to add a lot to all the locations you visit in the game. That's the most striking difference compared to the original (after the increased resolution of course) and while I prefer it, the simplicity of the original (which mainly has interactable objects as part of the background) has me very intrigued as well. Enemy design is very good and visuals overall look very good to this day. I can't say it couldn't profit from the modern Resi Remake treatment, but it will age very well in its current state too.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Horror games rarely ever scare me. If they accomplish this, it will be due to a jump scare or, like in this game's case, through great game design. This is truly survival horror, where you live on the edge of survival at all times. Limited resources, limited saves and lots (but not too many) of dangers. Each decision can be fatal, which is why I was on the edge of my seat throughout (and I played on EASY). Usually, I have enough ammo or have an auto save close enough to put me at ease, and while those games can accomplish dread just as well, Resident Evil is one of the earliest games to ever do it for me.
CONTENT | 9/10
The sheer volume of content in this game is impressive. You have your 15 hour normal playthrough. Then you have your second 15 hour playthrough with a different character and some different cutscenes, as well as a change in items. Jill has the lockpick, Chris has the lighter. Chris can take more hits but Jill gets a grenade launcher and improved shotgun. There is a clear easier route, but both worth playing. Then there are the different outcomes and endings based on who you manage to save.
The only issue with the content is that 15 hour playthroughs include about 5 hours of backtracking and door opening, which can drag down the experience depending on your preferences. That said, your second playthrough should be a few hours shorter since you know where to find everything at that point.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
They have done a great job at the survival horror gameplay loop, but I can't say I felt like the level design was perfect in this. I'd argue there are a few too many doors and a little too much backtracking with not enough interconnectivity in my opinion. Otherwise, great.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 9/10
Resident Evil made survival horror mainstream and even helped bring zombies back to pop culture. This type of game was done before in a much simpler form, which keeps me from giving it a full 10, but the impact of Resident Evil cannot be understated.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Two characters, lots of different cutscenes and outcomes, and a number of challenge runs you are asked to do for 100% completion makes this a very replayable game. I mean look at this. Beat it in 5 hours, beat it in 3 hours, beat it with no saves, beat it with no saves ... I've got no chance, but for people who dare, this is great.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
Resident Evil is one of the best games I've played as part of this challenge and has rightfully started a major franchise that spread to a bunch of different media over the years. Not all done with the name ended up being good, but the original sure was. It made me realize that I truly do love survival horror, though I'm also not the biggest survival horror nut considering my thoughts about all the backtracking. A game that is a mix of this and Resident Evil 4's focus on action feels like it could be insane. Perhaps Resident Evil 2 Remake is that game, I will see soon enough.
(This is the 118th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I've spent the past two months or so playing Super Mario RPG whenever I got the time since I'm currently spending a semester abroad. Finding the time to sit down and play this has always been a treat because Super Mario RPG is such an easy going, chill and funny video game. It should probably be in every Top 10, if not Top 5 SNES RPG list out there, and is definitely one of the best starting points to RPGs for newcomers, if the Mario setting sounds interesting to you.
The story is that there is something called the Star Road, where wishes are fulfilled. One day, when Mario once again goes to Bowsers Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool, a massive sword falls down from the sky and onto Bowser's Castle. The sword tears through the Star Road and scatters seven star pieces throughout the land, and it is Mario's job to collect them to repair the Star Road. You get the help of companions like Bowser and Princess Toadstool, but also two characters that I think are new to the Mario universe in Mallow and Geno.
The story is rather simple and character development, while there for Mallow and Geno, happens pretty quickly when they get their moments and isn't at all fleshed out, which makes sense considering the game is aimed primarily towards young gamers. Still, you got a wholesome party to support you on your journey, and that makes for a chill time almost throughout.
I say almost because like all RPGs of its time, Super Mario RPG requires you to grind for levels at certain points. At least that has to be the case, as I literally couldn't get past a certain fight against the Axem Rangers very far into the game. For a game like this where progression is otherwise very easy, this was a shame. Because the thing with Super Mario RPG is that it is not just a simple RPG in terms of knowing where to go, the low number of items and skills to keep track of or the battle difficulty for 90% of fights. It's also lacking in combat depth, so it would have just been tedious for me to go back and grind for an hour or two to get past the Axem Rangers, only to probably be in a similar position with even later bosses. Additionally, while the game has a parry-timing feature, in that you need to press the A button right when you are attacked to reduce or null damage, a lot of attacks by tougher bosses are unblockable, and I feel like focusing more on the timing would have resulted in a better flow. That said, whenever the parry-timing was usable, I had fun with it and as someone who loved that in the South Park RPGs, I was happy to see the feature appear here.
The soundtrack includes great tunes and remixes and the map design overall is solid. My favorite part about the game has to be the constant mini games and challenges the game throws at you to keep things varied. They added a lot to the humor often times too.
Overall, I'm definitely keen on playing the remake of this some day and I enjoyed my time with it. It's just a shame that I didn't see the necessity to grind coming. As someone who falls victim to this many times when playing (old-school) RPGs, I didn't expect the original Super Mario RPG to have any grinding included as well, but whether you see this as a bad thing will obviously be a subjective opinion. I'm thinking the remake is more lax in that regard, and considering that it seems very faithful to the original, I don't think there is much reason to track down the original anymore. Unless you'd like to emulate over paying for the full remake, in which case the original certainly holds up well.
I've spent the past two months or so playing Super Mario RPG whenever I got the time since I'm currently spending a semester abroad. Finding the time to sit down and play this has always been a treat because Super Mario RPG is such an easy going, chill and funny video game. It should probably be in every Top 10, if not Top 5 SNES RPG list out there, and is definitely one of the best starting points to RPGs for newcomers, if the Mario setting sounds interesting to you.
The story is that there is something called the Star Road, where wishes are fulfilled. One day, when Mario once again goes to Bowsers Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool, a massive sword falls down from the sky and onto Bowser's Castle. The sword tears through the Star Road and scatters seven star pieces throughout the land, and it is Mario's job to collect them to repair the Star Road. You get the help of companions like Bowser and Princess Toadstool, but also two characters that I think are new to the Mario universe in Mallow and Geno.
The story is rather simple and character development, while there for Mallow and Geno, happens pretty quickly when they get their moments and isn't at all fleshed out, which makes sense considering the game is aimed primarily towards young gamers. Still, you got a wholesome party to support you on your journey, and that makes for a chill time almost throughout.
I say almost because like all RPGs of its time, Super Mario RPG requires you to grind for levels at certain points. At least that has to be the case, as I literally couldn't get past a certain fight against the Axem Rangers very far into the game. For a game like this where progression is otherwise very easy, this was a shame. Because the thing with Super Mario RPG is that it is not just a simple RPG in terms of knowing where to go, the low number of items and skills to keep track of or the battle difficulty for 90% of fights. It's also lacking in combat depth, so it would have just been tedious for me to go back and grind for an hour or two to get past the Axem Rangers, only to probably be in a similar position with even later bosses. Additionally, while the game has a parry-timing feature, in that you need to press the A button right when you are attacked to reduce or null damage, a lot of attacks by tougher bosses are unblockable, and I feel like focusing more on the timing would have resulted in a better flow. That said, whenever the parry-timing was usable, I had fun with it and as someone who loved that in the South Park RPGs, I was happy to see the feature appear here.
The soundtrack includes great tunes and remixes and the map design overall is solid. My favorite part about the game has to be the constant mini games and challenges the game throws at you to keep things varied. They added a lot to the humor often times too.
Overall, I'm definitely keen on playing the remake of this some day and I enjoyed my time with it. It's just a shame that I didn't see the necessity to grind coming. As someone who falls victim to this many times when playing (old-school) RPGs, I didn't expect the original Super Mario RPG to have any grinding included as well, but whether you see this as a bad thing will obviously be a subjective opinion. I'm thinking the remake is more lax in that regard, and considering that it seems very faithful to the original, I don't think there is much reason to track down the original anymore. Unless you'd like to emulate over paying for the full remake, in which case the original certainly holds up well.
2021
I've played for more or less 20 hours of this now after seeing it recommended everywhere for like a million times in the past two years. It's a very relaxing game like advertised. Or incredibly stressful, depending on what kind of thoughts enter your mind when you can play a game without having to think about what you're doing all that much.
The premise is very relaxing though. Clean up dirty environments. Very fun to see the end result when you're done, and there is lots of content for it to not get repetitive. Mod support would have been nice, but looks like that's not coming for this game.
The premise is very relaxing though. Clean up dirty environments. Very fun to see the end result when you're done, and there is lots of content for it to not get repetitive. Mod support would have been nice, but looks like that's not coming for this game.
(This is the 117th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
NOSTALGIA OVERLOAD. I didn't play many games as a kid (I played plenty, just not many different games), and just a few weeks ago I found out that the game I played the most at like age 6 or 7 was this one right here, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The weird feeling of both joy and, surprisingly, anxiety this game gave me was unreal. It didn't take long to realize where that came from. Turns out, I made it quite far as a kid, to World 4 or 5 in fact, and the boss fights, which are actually mostly very easy, just had me feeling all kinds of anxious when the Magikoopa, Kamek, would make normal enemies into bosses.
But it was 99% pure pleasure to play this game, as I found myself remembering all the sounds, the music, the enemies, some of the puzzles, the platforming, the egg-shooting, the stairs and flowers that would come out of the clouds with a question mark on them, the sound of the plants dying when I shoot them with an egg, the power up mini games where Yoshi turns into a chopper and Baby Mario can become invincible, the balloon minigames, just all of it. Pure. Pleasure.
It helps that the game aged extremely well and is one of the most unique games I've played so far in the 6 years I've now completed as part of this challenge. Super Mario World 2 is not necessarily an actual sequel to Super Mario World because its main character and some of its core features are different, but that's a good thing because the way Nintendo was able to innovate for a soon to be replaced SNES in favor of the N64 is just magical. It feels like they're showing off just because they can. Turns out, this game had one of the longer development cycles for any game ever at the time, so it makes sense that they went a little extra with the variety on display here. Then there is of course the hand-drawn aesthetic to the game, which looks beautiful, and probably even if you don't look at it with nostalgia glasses like I've done the whole time.
The level design is fantastic, with more room given for exploration than per usual and lots of secrets to uncover without having to go back a level and bring Yoshi or a power-up with you like in SMW1, and constantly new threats and abilities that change things up nearly continously. Worlds 3 to 5 didn't offer as much in that regard as worlds 1, 2 and 6 but even those levels alone show more variety than 99% of platformers have in their entirety at the time.
The soundtrack is great as well, with my only issue being that songs keep repeating after a while. With the talents at Nintendo, I would have thought they could have introduced more songs in later worlds. The only new songs I remember later on where remixes of the main menu theme and boss fight themes, which were incredible.
Gameplay is smooth and wasn't as tough as I imagined, with most deaths feeling fair and like they were my fault and not BS thrown at me by the game. Those moments did happen, and Yoshi slipped off the edges more often than I would have liked, but it is still incredibly fun to play this game today.
One of the best platformers of its time, one of the best platformers to this day, an incredible final 2D game for Mario (kinda, more like a first Yoshi game) before he moves on to 3D in 1996 for the foreseeable future with Super Mario 64.
NOSTALGIA OVERLOAD. I didn't play many games as a kid (I played plenty, just not many different games), and just a few weeks ago I found out that the game I played the most at like age 6 or 7 was this one right here, Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The weird feeling of both joy and, surprisingly, anxiety this game gave me was unreal. It didn't take long to realize where that came from. Turns out, I made it quite far as a kid, to World 4 or 5 in fact, and the boss fights, which are actually mostly very easy, just had me feeling all kinds of anxious when the Magikoopa, Kamek, would make normal enemies into bosses.
But it was 99% pure pleasure to play this game, as I found myself remembering all the sounds, the music, the enemies, some of the puzzles, the platforming, the egg-shooting, the stairs and flowers that would come out of the clouds with a question mark on them, the sound of the plants dying when I shoot them with an egg, the power up mini games where Yoshi turns into a chopper and Baby Mario can become invincible, the balloon minigames, just all of it. Pure. Pleasure.
It helps that the game aged extremely well and is one of the most unique games I've played so far in the 6 years I've now completed as part of this challenge. Super Mario World 2 is not necessarily an actual sequel to Super Mario World because its main character and some of its core features are different, but that's a good thing because the way Nintendo was able to innovate for a soon to be replaced SNES in favor of the N64 is just magical. It feels like they're showing off just because they can. Turns out, this game had one of the longer development cycles for any game ever at the time, so it makes sense that they went a little extra with the variety on display here. Then there is of course the hand-drawn aesthetic to the game, which looks beautiful, and probably even if you don't look at it with nostalgia glasses like I've done the whole time.
The level design is fantastic, with more room given for exploration than per usual and lots of secrets to uncover without having to go back a level and bring Yoshi or a power-up with you like in SMW1, and constantly new threats and abilities that change things up nearly continously. Worlds 3 to 5 didn't offer as much in that regard as worlds 1, 2 and 6 but even those levels alone show more variety than 99% of platformers have in their entirety at the time.
The soundtrack is great as well, with my only issue being that songs keep repeating after a while. With the talents at Nintendo, I would have thought they could have introduced more songs in later worlds. The only new songs I remember later on where remixes of the main menu theme and boss fight themes, which were incredible.
Gameplay is smooth and wasn't as tough as I imagined, with most deaths feeling fair and like they were my fault and not BS thrown at me by the game. Those moments did happen, and Yoshi slipped off the edges more often than I would have liked, but it is still incredibly fun to play this game today.
One of the best platformers of its time, one of the best platformers to this day, an incredible final 2D game for Mario (kinda, more like a first Yoshi game) before he moves on to 3D in 1996 for the foreseeable future with Super Mario 64.
1995
(This is the 116th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I kept this game in my playlist for the challenge because it looked unique and kind of reminded me of Hotline Miami, which is a gaming series I really like. It's a top down shoot 'em up where you pick one of 6 playable characters that differ in speed, health, weaponry and their ultra attack. Then you walk through levels and shoot up some bad guys and watch blood splatter everywhere. It's gory, it's grotesque, it's macabre. Basically, what many teenage gamers would be kind of into at the time.
Obviously, its shock factor is pretty much nonexistent by today's standards, but what strikes me as most notable about the game for its time is that unlike other criticized games like Doom, where you kill demonic creatures, or Night Trap, where you try to save the good kids, Loaded has you play psychotic killers and perverts. The goal is the same, you are supposed to stop a supervillain (likely because the game would not be allowed to release without an actual reason given to the killing in the game) but since none of the backstory is in the game, I never got the impression that I was doing any good. It feels like you enter a prison, kill its psycho inhabitants and try to escape yourself.
Anyway, while I wouldn't be bothered by this either way but just find it to be something interesting to add to this review, the gameplay itself I did take offense to. Levels were seemingly designed by an 8 year old, as they are incredibly repetitive and uninspired. Combat itself is pretty bland as well, as you can use your special attack a few times before charges run out and otherwise just have to hold down the shoot button as you run through door after door after door. Similarly to a Doom, you need to find key cards to unlock more doors and escape from each level or find a specific target.
One annoyance is that enemies get right at you when they spot you, and shooting at an enemy that is right at your face doesn't kill them for some reason. You need to find at least an inch of distance to kill the enemies, which is an odd bug. Worse, turning and shooting at enemies is pretty difficult because your shot only covers so little of the screen and enemies keep moving, so sometimes I found myself turning around multiple times to finally hit an enemy.
The worst part? After all this turning for an hour, I actually got a massive headache from my session. I don't remember which games they were but this happened to me for the 2nd or 3rd time ever over all these years that a game gave me a headache. You might not feel the same while playing this, but even without the headache-inducing nature of the game, I wouldn't recommend playing it. The soundtrack is probably the best part about it, but there are only 8 tracks or so in the game and they range from meh to solid.
I kept this game in my playlist for the challenge because it looked unique and kind of reminded me of Hotline Miami, which is a gaming series I really like. It's a top down shoot 'em up where you pick one of 6 playable characters that differ in speed, health, weaponry and their ultra attack. Then you walk through levels and shoot up some bad guys and watch blood splatter everywhere. It's gory, it's grotesque, it's macabre. Basically, what many teenage gamers would be kind of into at the time.
Obviously, its shock factor is pretty much nonexistent by today's standards, but what strikes me as most notable about the game for its time is that unlike other criticized games like Doom, where you kill demonic creatures, or Night Trap, where you try to save the good kids, Loaded has you play psychotic killers and perverts. The goal is the same, you are supposed to stop a supervillain (likely because the game would not be allowed to release without an actual reason given to the killing in the game) but since none of the backstory is in the game, I never got the impression that I was doing any good. It feels like you enter a prison, kill its psycho inhabitants and try to escape yourself.
Anyway, while I wouldn't be bothered by this either way but just find it to be something interesting to add to this review, the gameplay itself I did take offense to. Levels were seemingly designed by an 8 year old, as they are incredibly repetitive and uninspired. Combat itself is pretty bland as well, as you can use your special attack a few times before charges run out and otherwise just have to hold down the shoot button as you run through door after door after door. Similarly to a Doom, you need to find key cards to unlock more doors and escape from each level or find a specific target.
One annoyance is that enemies get right at you when they spot you, and shooting at an enemy that is right at your face doesn't kill them for some reason. You need to find at least an inch of distance to kill the enemies, which is an odd bug. Worse, turning and shooting at enemies is pretty difficult because your shot only covers so little of the screen and enemies keep moving, so sometimes I found myself turning around multiple times to finally hit an enemy.
The worst part? After all this turning for an hour, I actually got a massive headache from my session. I don't remember which games they were but this happened to me for the 2nd or 3rd time ever over all these years that a game gave me a headache. You might not feel the same while playing this, but even without the headache-inducing nature of the game, I wouldn't recommend playing it. The soundtrack is probably the best part about it, but there are only 8 tracks or so in the game and they range from meh to solid.
(This is the 115th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Just when you praise a Spider-Man game for not being complete garbage like the previous seven (!) video game entries for the franchise, and just when you say that Acclaim Entertainment actually published a game that doesn't suck complete butt, you get Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety. Now the 9th out of 9 Spider-Man games I played that hasn't even hit 50/100 in my review system, Separation Anxiety (1995) is an uninspired and clearly unbudgeted sequel to 1994's Maximum Carnage.
Basically, Software Creations made an OK Spider-Man beat 'em up game. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that sold at least OK. So whatever budget Acclaim Entertainment gave Software Creations, which based on the quality of their games probably wasn't a lot, they saw how well the devs did despite the odds and said "Hey, if you can make a game that is actually half-OK with a budget of $10, then make a sequel with a budget of $1." And that's what this game is.
It features the same gameplay pretty much exactly, with only two differences. 1) Some of the basic, repetitive enemy types are replaced with equally basic, repetitive enemy types. 2) They removed the comic book storytelling and replaced it with simple text.... Yep. A sequel offering less than the original is not the ideal way to do things, is it?
Similarly to the original, gameplay is really bad and involves mashing one button for most of the time and watching as you can pretty much not avoid getting hit constantly. How people beat these games without emulators and rewinds is beyond me. I tried without that feature for the first 45 minutes, couldn't even get past the first level, tried for 15 minutes with rewinding, beat the first level and gave up shortly after because this game does not deserve to be played, let alone beaten.
The game is riddled with everything that makes Spider-Man video games just the saddest thing I've discovered about the 90s as part of this challenge. Low budget, bad gameplay, bland and repetitive visuals, boring and basic soundtrack, and just a very unfun time overall. Avoid.
Just when you praise a Spider-Man game for not being complete garbage like the previous seven (!) video game entries for the franchise, and just when you say that Acclaim Entertainment actually published a game that doesn't suck complete butt, you get Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety. Now the 9th out of 9 Spider-Man games I played that hasn't even hit 50/100 in my review system, Separation Anxiety (1995) is an uninspired and clearly unbudgeted sequel to 1994's Maximum Carnage.
Basically, Software Creations made an OK Spider-Man beat 'em up game. If I had to venture a guess, I'd say that sold at least OK. So whatever budget Acclaim Entertainment gave Software Creations, which based on the quality of their games probably wasn't a lot, they saw how well the devs did despite the odds and said "Hey, if you can make a game that is actually half-OK with a budget of $10, then make a sequel with a budget of $1." And that's what this game is.
It features the same gameplay pretty much exactly, with only two differences. 1) Some of the basic, repetitive enemy types are replaced with equally basic, repetitive enemy types. 2) They removed the comic book storytelling and replaced it with simple text.... Yep. A sequel offering less than the original is not the ideal way to do things, is it?
Similarly to the original, gameplay is really bad and involves mashing one button for most of the time and watching as you can pretty much not avoid getting hit constantly. How people beat these games without emulators and rewinds is beyond me. I tried without that feature for the first 45 minutes, couldn't even get past the first level, tried for 15 minutes with rewinding, beat the first level and gave up shortly after because this game does not deserve to be played, let alone beaten.
The game is riddled with everything that makes Spider-Man video games just the saddest thing I've discovered about the 90s as part of this challenge. Low budget, bad gameplay, bland and repetitive visuals, boring and basic soundtrack, and just a very unfun time overall. Avoid.
1995
(This is the 114th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I enjoy LucasArts adventure games and I've played lots of them as part of this challenge. Loom, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and now The Dig, which had been recommended to me a few times when I reviewed the others. Straight off the bat, it's easy to see why. It's an incredibly atmospheric adventure with a more serious tone than usual for LucasArts, though not bereft of their trademark witty and dad joke loving characters.
It's about a 5-person group assigned to plant nuclear bombs on an asteroid that is on collision course with the earth to basically make it securely orbit around Earth. The group that is assigned for the job is an interesting mix, as you got one journalist, a technician who is also running for congress, an archeologist, a pilot and the main character, the Commander.
The Commander, Boston Low, the journalist, Maggie Robbins, and the archeologist, Ludger Brink, enter the inside of the asteroid after blowing it open, stumble upon an odd puzzle within and are teleported into deep space. When they come to, they are on an alien planet that seems to no longer have any sentient life on it. Based on what is left behind on this planet though, it seems clear that there WAS sentient life here at least. So you start solving these mysteries to figure out a way back to Earth.
Unfortunately, for such a great setup for its story, a big issue with The Dig is that its puzzles are maddening. I'm OK with a few obtuse puzzles, they are practically unavoidable in LucasArts adventures, but The Dig puts a new meaning to it. There is one puzzle in particular, where some sort of fish / turtle is eaten in front of you and its remains are spit back on land. Interacting with it opens a window where you see about 15-20 pieces of this fish in disarray. The goal is to reassemble everything into the correct order. How are you supposed to do this? Well, there are the really conveniently placed remains of the same type of fish on the next screen. So go there, remember how ALL these pieces are set up, go back to the fish in disarray, and try to place everything in the same way.
EXCEPT. You have to place it EXACTLY in one specific way and every item has to be in EXACT order, otherwise you didn't do it right. After spending way too long on this dumb puzzle, I looked up online how to set it up. After setting it up exactly that way, the game said I STILL did it wrong, meaning something was probably an inch off or something. I couldn't be bothered to find out, so I called it quits there.
There are more bad puzzles in the game up to that point, and most definitely after I'm sure, but the problem with these puzzles is that 1) they're bad, obviously but 2) they ruin an otherwise incredible atmosphere set up by a very well paced first act, the great visuals (for its time), the cinematics and the sound design.
The game feels much more big budget than prior LucasArts adventures, and it has some cool ideas, like talking to your crew members and regularly being able to ask them about clues you find as well as just engaging in optional conversation and getting to know them better, but the puzzle difficulty ruined it for me. Only play this if you're a more hardcore point & click adventure fan, because you're gonna be at some of these puzzles for a long while without a guide and even with one, some of them are just tiring.
I enjoy LucasArts adventure games and I've played lots of them as part of this challenge. Loom, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones and now The Dig, which had been recommended to me a few times when I reviewed the others. Straight off the bat, it's easy to see why. It's an incredibly atmospheric adventure with a more serious tone than usual for LucasArts, though not bereft of their trademark witty and dad joke loving characters.
It's about a 5-person group assigned to plant nuclear bombs on an asteroid that is on collision course with the earth to basically make it securely orbit around Earth. The group that is assigned for the job is an interesting mix, as you got one journalist, a technician who is also running for congress, an archeologist, a pilot and the main character, the Commander.
The Commander, Boston Low, the journalist, Maggie Robbins, and the archeologist, Ludger Brink, enter the inside of the asteroid after blowing it open, stumble upon an odd puzzle within and are teleported into deep space. When they come to, they are on an alien planet that seems to no longer have any sentient life on it. Based on what is left behind on this planet though, it seems clear that there WAS sentient life here at least. So you start solving these mysteries to figure out a way back to Earth.
Unfortunately, for such a great setup for its story, a big issue with The Dig is that its puzzles are maddening. I'm OK with a few obtuse puzzles, they are practically unavoidable in LucasArts adventures, but The Dig puts a new meaning to it. There is one puzzle in particular, where some sort of fish / turtle is eaten in front of you and its remains are spit back on land. Interacting with it opens a window where you see about 15-20 pieces of this fish in disarray. The goal is to reassemble everything into the correct order. How are you supposed to do this? Well, there are the really conveniently placed remains of the same type of fish on the next screen. So go there, remember how ALL these pieces are set up, go back to the fish in disarray, and try to place everything in the same way.
EXCEPT. You have to place it EXACTLY in one specific way and every item has to be in EXACT order, otherwise you didn't do it right. After spending way too long on this dumb puzzle, I looked up online how to set it up. After setting it up exactly that way, the game said I STILL did it wrong, meaning something was probably an inch off or something. I couldn't be bothered to find out, so I called it quits there.
There are more bad puzzles in the game up to that point, and most definitely after I'm sure, but the problem with these puzzles is that 1) they're bad, obviously but 2) they ruin an otherwise incredible atmosphere set up by a very well paced first act, the great visuals (for its time), the cinematics and the sound design.
The game feels much more big budget than prior LucasArts adventures, and it has some cool ideas, like talking to your crew members and regularly being able to ask them about clues you find as well as just engaging in optional conversation and getting to know them better, but the puzzle difficulty ruined it for me. Only play this if you're a more hardcore point & click adventure fan, because you're gonna be at some of these puzzles for a long while without a guide and even with one, some of them are just tiring.
2019
I jumped into Yakuza 4 straight after Yakuza 3 but that might have been a mistake since I'm going abroad for 6 months and didn't have much time left to finish Yakuza 4 before I leave. This means I bypassed most of the content outside of the main story and the review will mainly be focused on that. Though even if you just focus on the story here, you will constantly be shown the type of side content that is available, such as the hostess makeover minigame that was introduced in Yakuza 3, a similar make-a-fighter minigame, and a bunch of stuff that the series introduced in previous entries.
As far as the main story goes, Yakuza 4 has 4 main characters who each have 4 chapters focused on their part in the overall plot before it all culminates in a final chapter. The 4 main characters all have distinct personalities that succeed in making them all stand out. You got the charismatic Shun Akiyama who stole the show for me, but you also got his polar opposite in the stoic Taiga Saejima. I thought I'd go over each of the characters before I give my thoughts on the rest of the game overall.
I do want to say that I had mixed feelings about 4 main characters throughout. Yakuza 0 had 2 and remains my favorite Yakuza game, so I have nothing against multiple protagonists, but 4 felt like it took away from the connection you get to the character and the satisfying feeling of upgrading your character and seeing how he continues to get stronger. Here, by the time a character gains enough skills to make fights more interesting, you switch to the next protagonist. That said, side content and their own parts in the main story do offer plenty of time with each character to allow them to leave an impact, I'd just prefer a game with 2 protagonists who you switch between a la Yakuza 0, or just one character. (And yes, I do realize that Yakuza 5 has 5 protagonists. Let's see how that goes.)
Shun Akiyama: The game starts with him and his personality takes center stage pretty much off the bat. His mannerisms, voice acting and overall character made his chapters go by really quick, and I find both his backstory and the whole Sky Finance business fascinating. His fighting style is also probably my favorite in the game. Don't know the name of it but he's mainly using kicks during combat and it was a fun way to mix it up.
Taiga Saejima: Very dark character with some very memorable moments (some positively, some really negatively (you'll know when you see it). Hated his fighting style and his fights because the balancing is pretty messed up (Saito battle I'm looking at you), and he doesn't really ever become satisfying to play with. Even outside of combat, exploration with him was a horrible time because of all the police everywhere.
Masayoshi Tanimura: An overly confident police officer who doesn't shy away from breaking the rules at times. Definitely ended up being a lot more interesting character wise than I expected going in, and his parry-heavy combat style lets you pull off some of the coolest combos for sure, though his final boss fight was the biggest AIDS-inducing fight of my life, especially since I went in with just one healing item like a stupid person.
Kazuma Kiryu: His part was pretty short overall but solid as expected. I understand why they decided to add more protagonists to be able to tell stories differently, and I think that was a good call but I love Kiryu, so playing as him longer would have been what I'd have preferred.
The story in the game overall has some strong and some weak parts. For one, there is a saying called "too many cooks in a kitchen", and I think too many antagonists in a story applies here. I laughed out loud at the number of plot twists the story through at me, which I think indicates that there were too many. It's not very well written overall but rather felt like a guilty pleasure type story, and reminded me even more of a soap opera than Yakuza stories can tend to feel like. Not a terrible thing, because the protagonists are great overall and many of the antagonists and their parts in the story were well explained, but then you got guys like Daigo who feels like he was added in last second and some other names who have some odd moments that are questionable in terms of their logic. Then there are the countless "what are the odds?" moments where events occur way too perfectly for the story to progress in a certain direction, especially involving Kiryu. I can live with a few of these but I thought the game overdid it. But overall, the story had many badass moments involving badass characters and even if it wasn't well written at all times, that alone was satisfying to watch unfold. A final negative note for me was, clearly due to budgetary issues, the fact that so many key cinematic moments were interrupted and conversations ended up happening unvoiced outside of cutscenes. It does take something away from them and I wish we could have gotten half an hour's worth of additional cutscenes at least.
The combat felt improved from Yakuza 3 but also worse in some ways. Probably the most frustrating I got at a Yakuza game ever, and continuously so. Boss fights were frustrating, sure, but there were also too many mini-bosses who pissed me off. One big issue for me was that combos never worked with some of these guys because they'd just hit you with an unblockable attack to end the combo. Or that they just wouldn't get knocked down. Another big issue was that you could so easily be stunlocked. Often it took one hit and you were unable to move for 3-5 seconds. Why?? Or even worse, every group you fight has that one cunt who grabs you. Sometimes, there were even 2 or 3 of those, so you'd escape one grapple to walk right into the next with no way to avoid it. It all culminated in the final boss fight, which, until you figure out to do it in one very specific way, I'm calling it now, is just the worst thing to happen to the Yakuza series. You got the antagonist and 10 of his henchman in the way. The antagonist shoots you with his pistol and the only way to avoid them is to grab enemies and attack them that way. Going straight at the antagonist doesn't work because there are 3 guys with knives who will just stab at you incessantly and you'll actually not even see your character in the sea of enemies sometimes. Trying to input commands and being unable to do anything is so frustrating, holy moly. But there is less guarding 99% of hits (now it's 50% guarding, 49% dodging) compared to Yakuza 3 at least.
Overall, Yakuza 4 has its unique strengths and weaknesses. I liked the story and its bad parts made me laugh more than annoyed, plus the protagonists are great additions to the overall story of the series. The combat has some great parts but also some of the worst in the series (from 0 to 4), at least in my opinion. The soundtrack is great and includes some absolute bangers (Receive and Bite You, For Faith, Material Delights etc.). If you're a fan of Yakuza, the game is great and I enjoyed it, but I'd say it's the weakest of the bunch for me when you combine everything.
As far as the main story goes, Yakuza 4 has 4 main characters who each have 4 chapters focused on their part in the overall plot before it all culminates in a final chapter. The 4 main characters all have distinct personalities that succeed in making them all stand out. You got the charismatic Shun Akiyama who stole the show for me, but you also got his polar opposite in the stoic Taiga Saejima. I thought I'd go over each of the characters before I give my thoughts on the rest of the game overall.
I do want to say that I had mixed feelings about 4 main characters throughout. Yakuza 0 had 2 and remains my favorite Yakuza game, so I have nothing against multiple protagonists, but 4 felt like it took away from the connection you get to the character and the satisfying feeling of upgrading your character and seeing how he continues to get stronger. Here, by the time a character gains enough skills to make fights more interesting, you switch to the next protagonist. That said, side content and their own parts in the main story do offer plenty of time with each character to allow them to leave an impact, I'd just prefer a game with 2 protagonists who you switch between a la Yakuza 0, or just one character. (And yes, I do realize that Yakuza 5 has 5 protagonists. Let's see how that goes.)
Shun Akiyama: The game starts with him and his personality takes center stage pretty much off the bat. His mannerisms, voice acting and overall character made his chapters go by really quick, and I find both his backstory and the whole Sky Finance business fascinating. His fighting style is also probably my favorite in the game. Don't know the name of it but he's mainly using kicks during combat and it was a fun way to mix it up.
Taiga Saejima: Very dark character with some very memorable moments (some positively, some really negatively (you'll know when you see it). Hated his fighting style and his fights because the balancing is pretty messed up (Saito battle I'm looking at you), and he doesn't really ever become satisfying to play with. Even outside of combat, exploration with him was a horrible time because of all the police everywhere.
Masayoshi Tanimura: An overly confident police officer who doesn't shy away from breaking the rules at times. Definitely ended up being a lot more interesting character wise than I expected going in, and his parry-heavy combat style lets you pull off some of the coolest combos for sure, though his final boss fight was the biggest AIDS-inducing fight of my life, especially since I went in with just one healing item like a stupid person.
Kazuma Kiryu: His part was pretty short overall but solid as expected. I understand why they decided to add more protagonists to be able to tell stories differently, and I think that was a good call but I love Kiryu, so playing as him longer would have been what I'd have preferred.
The story in the game overall has some strong and some weak parts. For one, there is a saying called "too many cooks in a kitchen", and I think too many antagonists in a story applies here. I laughed out loud at the number of plot twists the story through at me, which I think indicates that there were too many. It's not very well written overall but rather felt like a guilty pleasure type story, and reminded me even more of a soap opera than Yakuza stories can tend to feel like. Not a terrible thing, because the protagonists are great overall and many of the antagonists and their parts in the story were well explained, but then you got guys like Daigo who feels like he was added in last second and some other names who have some odd moments that are questionable in terms of their logic. Then there are the countless "what are the odds?" moments where events occur way too perfectly for the story to progress in a certain direction, especially involving Kiryu. I can live with a few of these but I thought the game overdid it. But overall, the story had many badass moments involving badass characters and even if it wasn't well written at all times, that alone was satisfying to watch unfold. A final negative note for me was, clearly due to budgetary issues, the fact that so many key cinematic moments were interrupted and conversations ended up happening unvoiced outside of cutscenes. It does take something away from them and I wish we could have gotten half an hour's worth of additional cutscenes at least.
The combat felt improved from Yakuza 3 but also worse in some ways. Probably the most frustrating I got at a Yakuza game ever, and continuously so. Boss fights were frustrating, sure, but there were also too many mini-bosses who pissed me off. One big issue for me was that combos never worked with some of these guys because they'd just hit you with an unblockable attack to end the combo. Or that they just wouldn't get knocked down. Another big issue was that you could so easily be stunlocked. Often it took one hit and you were unable to move for 3-5 seconds. Why?? Or even worse, every group you fight has that one cunt who grabs you. Sometimes, there were even 2 or 3 of those, so you'd escape one grapple to walk right into the next with no way to avoid it. It all culminated in the final boss fight, which, until you figure out to do it in one very specific way, I'm calling it now, is just the worst thing to happen to the Yakuza series. You got the antagonist and 10 of his henchman in the way. The antagonist shoots you with his pistol and the only way to avoid them is to grab enemies and attack them that way. Going straight at the antagonist doesn't work because there are 3 guys with knives who will just stab at you incessantly and you'll actually not even see your character in the sea of enemies sometimes. Trying to input commands and being unable to do anything is so frustrating, holy moly. But there is less guarding 99% of hits (now it's 50% guarding, 49% dodging) compared to Yakuza 3 at least.
Overall, Yakuza 4 has its unique strengths and weaknesses. I liked the story and its bad parts made me laugh more than annoyed, plus the protagonists are great additions to the overall story of the series. The combat has some great parts but also some of the worst in the series (from 0 to 4), at least in my opinion. The soundtrack is great and includes some absolute bangers (Receive and Bite You, For Faith, Material Delights etc.). If you're a fan of Yakuza, the game is great and I enjoyed it, but I'd say it's the weakest of the bunch for me when you combine everything.
(This is the 113th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest came out pretty much exactly a year after the original set the SNES world on fire. Because of that, it's actually impressive how creatively designed the levels are, how beautifully composed the soundtrack is and how well the game flows at many times.
Even still, I caught myself not quite enjoying this as much as it felt like I should at every second. I truly found myself controlling Diddy Kong and wondering "Do I not like platformers that much?". I can't say I grew up with platformers, though I did play many hours playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and both World games as a child. So maybe there is some truth to that. But then again, replaying Super Mario World about a year ago was a lot of fun.
Then I thought about Mega Man. About Sonic. About Kirby. About Wario. I enjoyed their platformer games for what they were (besides Mega Man, me and that series just isn't going to work out unfortunately) but didn't fall in love with any of them despite the praise most of the games have gotten. And it's a similar story with Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2. I love their visual style and their soundtracks. I can appreciate the gameplay and level design for what they are. But the loop just isn't all that fun to me relative to how it probably should be.
So I'm leaving these thoughts here just to catalogue the game as part of the challenge I'm doing, and if you're someone like me who is on the fence about the platforming genre, maybe you just find someone who shares your gaming tastes.
If I had to guess what the issue is, it's probably the fact that platformers are based on quick reaction times and the patience to learn patterns and repeat them for success. As a 26 year old, I feel like that's not the kind of stuff I can let myself be lured into anymore. With that comes the lack of patience for failure that I perceive comes cheaply, which is kind of what I felt in this game, more so than in the original Donkey Kong Country, though only by a little bit. Your character is pretty large compared to the overall screen, and your field of view is small as a result. Which means a lot of the time, I'd get hit by a character just appearing at the edge of the screen, leaving me with a small window to react. Another example are the jumps, which you have to execute within a small window because your characters can't jump all that far, even while running, leading me to fall to my death all too often by an inch.
Overall, it's a game I probably would love, similar to early Super Mario platformers, if I had played it as a kid and learned a lot of the patterns and secrets over dozens of hours of dying easy deaths, but Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest did not have that same appeal to today's me unfortunately.
I'll leave the review with this. If you're looking for retro platformers, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 are undoubtedly among the best gaming had to offer at the time. The way I play games these days just doesn't seem to work with these platformers all that well.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest came out pretty much exactly a year after the original set the SNES world on fire. Because of that, it's actually impressive how creatively designed the levels are, how beautifully composed the soundtrack is and how well the game flows at many times.
Even still, I caught myself not quite enjoying this as much as it felt like I should at every second. I truly found myself controlling Diddy Kong and wondering "Do I not like platformers that much?". I can't say I grew up with platformers, though I did play many hours playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and both World games as a child. So maybe there is some truth to that. But then again, replaying Super Mario World about a year ago was a lot of fun.
Then I thought about Mega Man. About Sonic. About Kirby. About Wario. I enjoyed their platformer games for what they were (besides Mega Man, me and that series just isn't going to work out unfortunately) but didn't fall in love with any of them despite the praise most of the games have gotten. And it's a similar story with Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2. I love their visual style and their soundtracks. I can appreciate the gameplay and level design for what they are. But the loop just isn't all that fun to me relative to how it probably should be.
So I'm leaving these thoughts here just to catalogue the game as part of the challenge I'm doing, and if you're someone like me who is on the fence about the platforming genre, maybe you just find someone who shares your gaming tastes.
If I had to guess what the issue is, it's probably the fact that platformers are based on quick reaction times and the patience to learn patterns and repeat them for success. As a 26 year old, I feel like that's not the kind of stuff I can let myself be lured into anymore. With that comes the lack of patience for failure that I perceive comes cheaply, which is kind of what I felt in this game, more so than in the original Donkey Kong Country, though only by a little bit. Your character is pretty large compared to the overall screen, and your field of view is small as a result. Which means a lot of the time, I'd get hit by a character just appearing at the edge of the screen, leaving me with a small window to react. Another example are the jumps, which you have to execute within a small window because your characters can't jump all that far, even while running, leading me to fall to my death all too often by an inch.
Overall, it's a game I probably would love, similar to early Super Mario platformers, if I had played it as a kid and learned a lot of the patterns and secrets over dozens of hours of dying easy deaths, but Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest did not have that same appeal to today's me unfortunately.
I'll leave the review with this. If you're looking for retro platformers, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 are undoubtedly among the best gaming had to offer at the time. The way I play games these days just doesn't seem to work with these platformers all that well.
1995
(This is the 112th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Funny how I played this right after Chrono Trigger and both games include clocks as part of their main menu. Couldn't be more different in tone and gameplay though.
Clock Tower is one of the first ever survival horror games, mixed with point & click adventure gameplay, and was released on September 14, 1995 for the SNES. Developed by Human Entertainment, it would go on to be ported over to PC, PlayStation and the WonderSwan (yes, really) but it never got released outside of Japan. That changes next year (2024) when a remaster makes the game available for Western audiences finally. If you want to play the original, you have to get a fan translation patch until then.
Clock Tower is heavily inspired by the 1985 film Phenomena, so much so that the main character is designed to look like that film's main character and shares the same name, Jennifer. I believe Clock Tower might just be the earliest rendition of a horror game with "run away" instead of "confrontational gameplay". You got Alone in the Dark as possibly the first ever Western survival horror game, but you got combat there. Sweet Home might be the first real overall survival horror game, but you got combat there too. So it makes sense that the game's director has been told that run away horror would not be fun when he tried to make this game, but Alien Isolation, Outlast, Amnesia etc. have proved them wrong over the years I'd say, including Clock Tower itself.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Jennifer is an orphan. She, alongside three other orphans, are adopted by a Simon Barrows and taken to his secluded mansion by a woman named Mary. The mansion is named "Clock Tower" because ... it has a clock tower. Mary goes to find Mr. Barrows when they arrive, you wait around for a minute, the girls get impatient and you start looking for her. As you enter the adjacent room, screams come from the room you just left, so you go back to see all the girls disappeared.
Now you go look for them and try to escape. There is some storytelling from here on, but it is limited to only key plot points. Where are the girls, who is responsible, what's the secret and how is the story resolved?
The cool thing is that things are semi-dynamic, in that events play out differently depending on which areas of the mansion you go to first. Your first encounter with the main antagonist for example can play out 3 different ways depending on whether you go to the courtyard, walk into the foyer or enter a bathroom. They're all pretty memorable scenes as well. Even the faith of the other girls is left to your path, as they can live or die depending on what you do, without knowing that you did it. This doesn't help flesh out any characters or make the story more compelling, but it's a really nice touch.
Figuring out the secret and getting the best out of 9 possible endings is not the very satisfying resolution you might think it is, but the variety of outcomes shows the passion involved in making this and helps your journey to be a little bit more unique than the majority of "static" horror experiences.
GAMEPLAY | 10/20
This game has elements of survival horror and point & click adventure. You move Jennifer around on a 2D plane by either using the directional pad to walk, the L and R buttons to run (on SNES) and the Y button to interact with objects. Walking is painfully, and I mean painfully, slow. Running is quick, but the game discourages it by having Jennifer's health gradually deteriorate as you run. This is indicated by the background color of her avatar in the bottom left corner, which changes from green all the way to orange. To be honest, there isn't really a notable difference between walking around with a green or orange background - not that I noticed anyway - so I'd say just run, because whatever good atmosphere the game sets, it's offset by the sleep-inducingly slow walking speed they gave Jennifer.
Progressing in this game is done by walking into one of the dozens of doors, finding key items and then finding a location to use these items on, which then unlocks more doors to enter. It's standard stuff, even for 1995, with the key difference being that there is a man with big ass scissors roaming about trying to kill you.
Interestingly, encounters with him are not randomly occuring after some time passes, but rather scripted events. I'm not going to go into the details of when and how you meet him, but the scenes range from surprising to funny in a good way and I'm sure those will be what I remember the longest out of my Clock Tower experience. To get away, I found that I had to either find a specific spot to trigger something or I'd have to wait for many minutes to pass while I run around. Because while he is chasing you, you can't interact with stuff, so you basically have to do one of the two. The way you evade him through triggers is pretty clever. One example is a bedroom, which has a parrot in it. If you hide unter the bed, the parrot will actually rat you out and you will die. If you however let the parrot out of its cage and trip it in one of the beds, you can come back here later and successfully hide under the bed. It's pretty cool how they pull it off.
Regarding death: It will find you in your first playthrough, but is more or less easily avoided in subsequent playthroughs. This makes encounters with Scissorman not so scary, but should you die, don't fret, as auto saves happen all the time. With the game's run time of 30 to 120 minutes, you basically can't not beat the game UNLESS:
You miss out on one key item. This might force you to go through the entire house again to find something hidden away in a difficult-to-see interactable spot. To prevent this, make sure you check every inch of every room for something interactable. If you do that, you'll be fine.
Overall, it's really not bad for its time, but the walking speed really did kill a lot of the enjoyment for me, and the layout of the mansion is so confusing that you'll be walking around the same halls and not find that one door you need to go into because they all look the same. In the end, I got 3 different endings on 3 playthroughs, and I did have fun with it overall because things occuring differently from playthrough to playthrough (unless you take the same path) was a nice surprise.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
No voice acting apart from the screams you'll hear throughout the game. There is also a low number of tracks used for the game's soundtrack, which makes sense when you understand that the game purposely sets the atmosphere of its game by having you listen to Jennifer's footsteps for like 90% of your playthrough. As mentioned before, the slow walking speed made me tired of the footsteps than kept on edge by them, but your experience may differ based on your patience. The soundtrack mainly consists of one theme that is remixed in subtle ways and played regularly throughout your playthrough. It is unnerving and works well though.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
The game features multiple gory scenes, which are pretty detailed and disturbing. There are plenty of those as well and you'll see them at regular intervals. The main visuals of the game are rather average looking however and you spend most of the game walking through halls that look the same. Most rooms are also simple-looking as they are adorned with pictures of random people and filled with regular furniture. The rooms that do stand out usually do so because of the one surprise hidden in there, but outside of that, the visuals you get for 90% of the game are nothing special.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10
If I played this in my younger days, I'd crap my pants. If you're in your late teens or 20s like me, you might still feel that way if you're particularly easy to scare. I'm on the other extreme of the spectrum in that I haven't had a horror game/movie scare me in well over 10 years. I'm not proud of it but rather saddened by that burden, however I mention it because me giving my thoughts on a game's atmosphere comes from that frame of mind. The game is considered to have a tremendous atmosphere, one that has you on edge throughout and positively disturbed. I can definitely attest to that in the game's key moments, and it's certainly among the scariest games the SNES has to offer.
That said, the walking speed and long silences really kill a lot of the atmosphere the game builds for me. It's a concious design choice I'm sure, but it hasn't aged well. It's worsened by the fact that these silences are obviously supposed to make enemy encounters more meaningful as the anticipation for them build up, but Scissorman is such a weak enemy once you figure him out that he's a nuisance more than a threat. Heck, Jennifer can simply grab his scissors and throw him to the ground like he's a toddler.
That combination makes me reserved about calling this game scary or very atmospheric for most parts, but I'm sure some of that comes from my relationship with horror media than from the game, though I can't say the game is not at fault for it a big amount too.
CONTENT | 8/10
For a game that can be finished in 15 minutes if Jennifer could actually run up stairs fast and open doors quicker, there is a lot more content here than meets the eye. There are 9 different endings, dozens of doors that include puzzles / jumpscares / grotesque scenes / key items to collect, enemy encounters to run away from and 3 friends to find, which can occur in a variety of ways. You can easily get 5-10 hours worth of the game, if you want to see all endings. For a SNES survival horror game, I appreciate that the game doesn't overstay its welcome.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The mansion is a lot more confusing than it should be. You got halls in the first and second floor and you enter them to find the way to the final area, where you will reach the finale. Simple enough. But was I already in this room? Or that room? Where even am I? Where have I not been yet? Some different looking doors and maybe some objects to remember areas by would have been nice.
That said, the fact that you can get different scenarios based on routes you take is a nice touch and works well, even though it might not make sense if you think about it too much. There is a scream you hear in one corridor for example. If you look out the window, that friend dies. If you don't look, the friend stays alive. But overall, this variety adds a lot more to the game than it detracts from it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
This might not be the best (run away) survival horror game ever made, but it was unique for its time and did things people didn't deem enjoyable before the game came out. Then Clock Tower released and not only was praised, but also sold well. We got many games in this sub-genre since, both in 2D and 3D variety. It all started here (as far as run away horror goes), or got its first big star of the sub-genre at least.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
Plenty of replayability thanks to the multiple endings and the different scenes you can trigger.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well at all times. The walking speed is just brutal though.
OVERALL | 61/100
Clock Tower is only the second survival horror game I've played since this challenge started in 1990. It might just be the second survival horror that released since 1990 regardless of whether I played them or not, so I will remember it fondly for that alone. It has the same growing pains many games have though, that are some of the first of a genre. It hasn't aged well in the gameplay department and your enjoyment of it will vary greatly based on your patience for the walking speed and your susceptibility to being scared easily in horror games. It brought the survival horror genre forward at time though, for which I appreciate it.
Funny how I played this right after Chrono Trigger and both games include clocks as part of their main menu. Couldn't be more different in tone and gameplay though.
Clock Tower is one of the first ever survival horror games, mixed with point & click adventure gameplay, and was released on September 14, 1995 for the SNES. Developed by Human Entertainment, it would go on to be ported over to PC, PlayStation and the WonderSwan (yes, really) but it never got released outside of Japan. That changes next year (2024) when a remaster makes the game available for Western audiences finally. If you want to play the original, you have to get a fan translation patch until then.
Clock Tower is heavily inspired by the 1985 film Phenomena, so much so that the main character is designed to look like that film's main character and shares the same name, Jennifer. I believe Clock Tower might just be the earliest rendition of a horror game with "run away" instead of "confrontational gameplay". You got Alone in the Dark as possibly the first ever Western survival horror game, but you got combat there. Sweet Home might be the first real overall survival horror game, but you got combat there too. So it makes sense that the game's director has been told that run away horror would not be fun when he tried to make this game, but Alien Isolation, Outlast, Amnesia etc. have proved them wrong over the years I'd say, including Clock Tower itself.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Jennifer is an orphan. She, alongside three other orphans, are adopted by a Simon Barrows and taken to his secluded mansion by a woman named Mary. The mansion is named "Clock Tower" because ... it has a clock tower. Mary goes to find Mr. Barrows when they arrive, you wait around for a minute, the girls get impatient and you start looking for her. As you enter the adjacent room, screams come from the room you just left, so you go back to see all the girls disappeared.
Now you go look for them and try to escape. There is some storytelling from here on, but it is limited to only key plot points. Where are the girls, who is responsible, what's the secret and how is the story resolved?
The cool thing is that things are semi-dynamic, in that events play out differently depending on which areas of the mansion you go to first. Your first encounter with the main antagonist for example can play out 3 different ways depending on whether you go to the courtyard, walk into the foyer or enter a bathroom. They're all pretty memorable scenes as well. Even the faith of the other girls is left to your path, as they can live or die depending on what you do, without knowing that you did it. This doesn't help flesh out any characters or make the story more compelling, but it's a really nice touch.
Figuring out the secret and getting the best out of 9 possible endings is not the very satisfying resolution you might think it is, but the variety of outcomes shows the passion involved in making this and helps your journey to be a little bit more unique than the majority of "static" horror experiences.
GAMEPLAY | 10/20
This game has elements of survival horror and point & click adventure. You move Jennifer around on a 2D plane by either using the directional pad to walk, the L and R buttons to run (on SNES) and the Y button to interact with objects. Walking is painfully, and I mean painfully, slow. Running is quick, but the game discourages it by having Jennifer's health gradually deteriorate as you run. This is indicated by the background color of her avatar in the bottom left corner, which changes from green all the way to orange. To be honest, there isn't really a notable difference between walking around with a green or orange background - not that I noticed anyway - so I'd say just run, because whatever good atmosphere the game sets, it's offset by the sleep-inducingly slow walking speed they gave Jennifer.
Progressing in this game is done by walking into one of the dozens of doors, finding key items and then finding a location to use these items on, which then unlocks more doors to enter. It's standard stuff, even for 1995, with the key difference being that there is a man with big ass scissors roaming about trying to kill you.
Interestingly, encounters with him are not randomly occuring after some time passes, but rather scripted events. I'm not going to go into the details of when and how you meet him, but the scenes range from surprising to funny in a good way and I'm sure those will be what I remember the longest out of my Clock Tower experience. To get away, I found that I had to either find a specific spot to trigger something or I'd have to wait for many minutes to pass while I run around. Because while he is chasing you, you can't interact with stuff, so you basically have to do one of the two. The way you evade him through triggers is pretty clever. One example is a bedroom, which has a parrot in it. If you hide unter the bed, the parrot will actually rat you out and you will die. If you however let the parrot out of its cage and trip it in one of the beds, you can come back here later and successfully hide under the bed. It's pretty cool how they pull it off.
Regarding death: It will find you in your first playthrough, but is more or less easily avoided in subsequent playthroughs. This makes encounters with Scissorman not so scary, but should you die, don't fret, as auto saves happen all the time. With the game's run time of 30 to 120 minutes, you basically can't not beat the game UNLESS:
You miss out on one key item. This might force you to go through the entire house again to find something hidden away in a difficult-to-see interactable spot. To prevent this, make sure you check every inch of every room for something interactable. If you do that, you'll be fine.
Overall, it's really not bad for its time, but the walking speed really did kill a lot of the enjoyment for me, and the layout of the mansion is so confusing that you'll be walking around the same halls and not find that one door you need to go into because they all look the same. In the end, I got 3 different endings on 3 playthroughs, and I did have fun with it overall because things occuring differently from playthrough to playthrough (unless you take the same path) was a nice surprise.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
No voice acting apart from the screams you'll hear throughout the game. There is also a low number of tracks used for the game's soundtrack, which makes sense when you understand that the game purposely sets the atmosphere of its game by having you listen to Jennifer's footsteps for like 90% of your playthrough. As mentioned before, the slow walking speed made me tired of the footsteps than kept on edge by them, but your experience may differ based on your patience. The soundtrack mainly consists of one theme that is remixed in subtle ways and played regularly throughout your playthrough. It is unnerving and works well though.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
The game features multiple gory scenes, which are pretty detailed and disturbing. There are plenty of those as well and you'll see them at regular intervals. The main visuals of the game are rather average looking however and you spend most of the game walking through halls that look the same. Most rooms are also simple-looking as they are adorned with pictures of random people and filled with regular furniture. The rooms that do stand out usually do so because of the one surprise hidden in there, but outside of that, the visuals you get for 90% of the game are nothing special.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 6/10
If I played this in my younger days, I'd crap my pants. If you're in your late teens or 20s like me, you might still feel that way if you're particularly easy to scare. I'm on the other extreme of the spectrum in that I haven't had a horror game/movie scare me in well over 10 years. I'm not proud of it but rather saddened by that burden, however I mention it because me giving my thoughts on a game's atmosphere comes from that frame of mind. The game is considered to have a tremendous atmosphere, one that has you on edge throughout and positively disturbed. I can definitely attest to that in the game's key moments, and it's certainly among the scariest games the SNES has to offer.
That said, the walking speed and long silences really kill a lot of the atmosphere the game builds for me. It's a concious design choice I'm sure, but it hasn't aged well. It's worsened by the fact that these silences are obviously supposed to make enemy encounters more meaningful as the anticipation for them build up, but Scissorman is such a weak enemy once you figure him out that he's a nuisance more than a threat. Heck, Jennifer can simply grab his scissors and throw him to the ground like he's a toddler.
That combination makes me reserved about calling this game scary or very atmospheric for most parts, but I'm sure some of that comes from my relationship with horror media than from the game, though I can't say the game is not at fault for it a big amount too.
CONTENT | 8/10
For a game that can be finished in 15 minutes if Jennifer could actually run up stairs fast and open doors quicker, there is a lot more content here than meets the eye. There are 9 different endings, dozens of doors that include puzzles / jumpscares / grotesque scenes / key items to collect, enemy encounters to run away from and 3 friends to find, which can occur in a variety of ways. You can easily get 5-10 hours worth of the game, if you want to see all endings. For a SNES survival horror game, I appreciate that the game doesn't overstay its welcome.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
The mansion is a lot more confusing than it should be. You got halls in the first and second floor and you enter them to find the way to the final area, where you will reach the finale. Simple enough. But was I already in this room? Or that room? Where even am I? Where have I not been yet? Some different looking doors and maybe some objects to remember areas by would have been nice.
That said, the fact that you can get different scenarios based on routes you take is a nice touch and works well, even though it might not make sense if you think about it too much. There is a scream you hear in one corridor for example. If you look out the window, that friend dies. If you don't look, the friend stays alive. But overall, this variety adds a lot more to the game than it detracts from it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 7/10
This might not be the best (run away) survival horror game ever made, but it was unique for its time and did things people didn't deem enjoyable before the game came out. Then Clock Tower released and not only was praised, but also sold well. We got many games in this sub-genre since, both in 2D and 3D variety. It all started here (as far as run away horror goes), or got its first big star of the sub-genre at least.
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
Plenty of replayability thanks to the multiple endings and the different scenes you can trigger.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well at all times. The walking speed is just brutal though.
OVERALL | 61/100
Clock Tower is only the second survival horror game I've played since this challenge started in 1990. It might just be the second survival horror that released since 1990 regardless of whether I played them or not, so I will remember it fondly for that alone. It has the same growing pains many games have though, that are some of the first of a genre. It hasn't aged well in the gameplay department and your enjoyment of it will vary greatly based on your patience for the walking speed and your susceptibility to being scared easily in horror games. It brought the survival horror genre forward at time though, for which I appreciate it.
1995
(This is the 111th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I didn't think Chrono Trigger, a 1995 JRPG by Square for the SNES, would live up to the incredibly high expectations I had that came from years and years of reading about how Chrono Trigger is still one of the best JRPGs today, if not one of the best games period. I would stumble upon quite a few of these types of highly praised games, only to have their impact lessened by the expectations going in.
With Chrono Trigger, there were two differences for me. First, I have done this challenge of mine for over a year now, starting all the way back in 1990 and arriving in 1995, having played 110 different games in the process, including over a dozen RPGs. So my expectations for what a great game in the 90s looks like were set rather accurately I'd say.
Second, unlike some of the other older games I would hear about and be slightly disappointed by, Chrono Trigger actually aged incredibly well. It won't make you a fan of the JRPG genre if you've tried many other games and don't enjoy the gameplay loop, but for fans of the genre, I'm gonna go ahead and say that there are few JRPGs out there who are as complete a package as Chrono Trigger. From 1990 to 1995, it's absolutely the best one, and possibly my favorite game as part of this challenge I've played so far. If you call yourself a JRPG fan, do yourself a favor and check this game out.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Chrono Trigger uses a time travel theme for its main story. You play as Crono (or however non-canon name you would like to give him), who looks like a DBZ character in the game's cover, which makes sense since the art designer worked on DBZ as well. The game starts in 1000 A.D. You wake up and go to the fair that is in town, where a local girl named Lucca has a transportation device to showcase, which teleports you from one box to the other right next to it.
An accident happens and a girl you were hanging out with, Marle, is sent into a portal that opened up by the power of her pendant. You choose to be the hero and go after her. Soon after, you realize you are now in 600 A.D. That's all fascinating and stuff, but all you want to do is grab Marle and get out of there. Events transpire, and not much later, you find yourself in the future and uncovering something very dark: The planet is dying. With the power of time travel at your hands, it's up to you and your friends to go back and forward in time to do what's necessary and prevent this horrible death.
What impresses the most about Chrono Trigger's storytelling is that it incorporates time travel and does not end up in a jumbled mess by the end. Quite the opposite actually. The time travel theme gives the story lots of options to explore different settings, events and permutations of said events, which lends itself perfectly to the fact that this game has not one, not two but 13 (!) different endings that differ quite notably from each other based on when and where you take certain actions.
Additionally, Chrono Trigger reaches the impressive feat of having a time travel story make sense overall, while also avoiding being as formulaic as JRPG stories tend to be at this time period. The main villain in this game is really interesting and actually scary as shit the more I think about it, and as someone who loves a good villain, that's awesome, though I won't say much more than that. There are also many other villains of which many were well-explored, and the game has a diverse and charming cast of characters. I found some to be one-dimensional, like Robo or Ayla, but the others have some stand-out moments as part of the main story or their own side stories. I wish there would have been more moments where the entire casts interacts like in one singular scene that I found throughout the whole game, but the game is more focused on its plot, which is well-paced almost throughout, and that makes for a great experience as well.
One final note I want to make is that the game does a really great job at foreshadowing certain events, locations and characters, and when you get to the points where they become relevant, it makes for some of the best moments in the game.
As someone who likes well-developed characters as much as a good plot, I would personally have liked a little bit more in that aspect, but the plot is great, characters are easy to root for and there are at least a couple that do have great backstories and development, so if you're looking for a JRPG who ticks these boxes, Chrono Trigger probably comes up at the top of most lists for a good reason.
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
JRPGs have a pretty well-established gameplay loop, and Chrono Trigger does not distance itself from that either, which is understandable considering it was made by the same company that is reponsible for Final Fantasy, the SaGa series, the Mana series and more. That said, what Chrono Trigger achieves is three-fold.
First, Chrono Trigger makes the loop less grindy and cryptic. I never felt the need to farm XP mindlessly for hours to have a chance at a random mid-game boss. There was one boss fight that was unusually tough, sure, but I beat it by adjusting my strategy and was able to continue through the rest of the game. The game also never forced me to use a guide, which, believe me, means something. There is always that one time in these RPGs where I'm stumped as to where to go or what to do, but with Chrono Trigger, I always figured it out eventually, without fail. Talk to all NPCs and you will definitely find your way forward.
Second, Chrono Trigger introduces quality of life changes and general improvements to the genre. Talk to an NPC accidentally? Just walk away mid dialogue without having to click each line away. Don't want to be thrown into random encounters? You don't have to, enemies almost always appear on the screen and you can often just walk past them. Feel like you're usually missing out on the good skills/weapons in JRPGs because you can't find them? The game has "Techs", which the characters unlock naturally as you use them, which are more than enough to overcome any challenge as long as you use them correctly.
Third, Chrono Trigger avoids filler, at least the SNES version does. It adds a lot to the pacing of the story that you're rarely out there searching for item X to supply to NPC Y to unlock Dungeon Z to find item A to supply NPC B to finally meaningfully progress the story. Yes, there of course is still some of that here, but I can't say it was a chore to go through any dungeon this game had to offer because it was well-balanced with progression of the story and your character, and dungeons usually have unique puzzles for you. Both in actual puzzles and in terms of the battles, where you need to figure out how to "solve" a fight before you actually beat the enemy. Certain enemies for example can block almost all of your physical or magical attacks. That's simple enough. Then there are some who first have to be shocked with a lightning attack before they lower their guard and take damage. These "puzzles" get more and more tricky as the game goes on, up until the final boss fight, where the game throws one final curveball at you, though I'll let you discover that on your own.
At the end of the day though, Chrono Trigger is still a turn-based Square JRPG. If you didn't enjoy these before or especially after Chrono Trigger, the "Tech" skills won't be enough to change your mind. Even to me, watching the same attack animations play out slowly over thousands of times in encounters against much weaker enemies is not very fun but rather something you have to do to get to the next big fight, or something you do as part of solving a dungeon. Square still use their Active Battle System, which I dislike as much as ever because it has 0 to do with strategy and one billion to do with being quick on the buttons like a 12 year old Fortnite player building a castle in four seconds. Losing battles can throw you up to an hour back if you die shortly before getting to your next save point (unless you use save states).
So, to put it short: If you enjoy gameplay in JRPGs, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, you won't here either, but it's the most fun non-Shin Megami Tensei (J)RPG I've played that came out in the 90s so far.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Did you hear that Chrono Trigger has a great soundtrack? Well you heard correctly. I loved this soundtrack from beginning to end. The fair theme and Gato's theme at the start already had me getting earworms for the rest of my first day playing this. The battle theme is great and just doesn't get old. Then there are numerous character and location themes that range from great to perfection. I could name you a dozen songs that I loved and would gladly listen to outside of the game, and others would probably name you another dozen that they remember very fondly. It's a terrific soundtrack and if you want a taste, I recommend you to check out Gato's / Gonzalez's Theme, Secret of the Forest, Guardia Castle, Battle with Magus and probably my favorite, Corridors of Time.
They call me Gato ♪
I have metal joints ♪
Beat me up ♪
And earn 15 silver points ♪
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Thanks to the time travel theme and the many different ages you visit, this game has a ton of visual variety, which helps the game to visually never get stale. Enemy design is great, the world design helps give each age its distinctive properties and while I thought the characters had some weird looks sometimes (Marle doing the squilly face for example), I did like their design as well, though the characters to me stand out a lot more in their avatars than their in-game sprites.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
This game packs so much detail for a game of its time and for any game period. I have one party scene in particular in mind where a unique song just for that scene plays and you got a bunch of characters just dancing as you walk around. I then interacted with Marle, who said something along the lines of "let's party", after which she went over to someone else and started mingling. Talking to her again prompted her to say "let's dance" and she started busting out the moves, and apart from the fact that I interacted with her to prompt these lines and actions, it all felt so natural. Or going to Lucca's home and talking to her mom, only for her dad to show up and then give us an item shortly after. Or the entirety of the millennial fair and how seemingly tiny interactions there are brought up later.
There are tons of small details like that and if you ask me what every great video game has, it is those small details. If you put that much care into those, it's almost a safe bet that the main portion of your game will be quality as well, and that's certainly the case here.
Outside of the details, the game is very atmospheric thanks to its varied locations and use of its songs. Funny thing is, even now a small detail comes to mind, like healing up in the future and getting the "you're still hungry" notification, which is such a small thing but only is added in this era. It helps paint the picture of the life the people who are there are living, and it makes a later moment stand out even more.
CONTENT | 10/10
The game is PACKED with content. It has a lot more content than you will see in one playthrough, that's for sure. It got all the endings, all the different ages, all the different side quests, lots of techs, double techs, triple techs, secret items, optional dungeons, New Game+ (which is a term coined in THIS game) and all those permutations to events you can have depending on your actions, not to mention plenty of bosses, high enemy variety and a ton of interaction that you can have between the ages, which is often optional but rewards you for your time pretty well. If you could only bring one JRPG with you on an island, and you had never played Chrono Trigger, this would keep you busy without you finding all the content in it for quiiite a while.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The pacing in this game is great and the way the game rewards optional exploration is one of the better examples I've ever seen. The fact that grinding is not required even a single bit is a great achievement in itself. If there is one negative I'd have, it's the final dungeon (I played the SNES version, I hear other versions have bad optional dungeons). This dungeon takes a bit too long for my taste and keeps throwing the same enemy at you that disables your tech/items, which turns these battles into boring "Press A and wait for the battle to end" slogs. The final boss form then has a BS attack that insta-kills your party unless they are at full health (2 of my 3 party members died even then), so I didn't enjoy that either, plus the GolemTwins fight was BS, but those would be my only negatives in a game I played for 25+ hours. The least frustrating retro JRPG I've played overall by a mile.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
In many core ways it doesn't differ from contemporary JRPGs, but the time travel mechanic and great pacing help the story stand out, the Tech system is one of the most fun satisfying systems I've experienced in retro JRPGs and the game helped popularize having a lot of different endings and NG+. Even if you are one to play through a game once and that's it, the way you can choose how and when to do things is a terrificly executed in Chrono Trigger.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Don't think I stumbled upon a more replayable game up to this point, Chrono Trigger can be played many times over and present you with vastly different events.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 90/100
Chrono Trigger aged tremendously. If you're a fan of JRPGs and haven't checked this out, I don't even know what to tell you. Is it the best JRPG today? Probably not, but I agree that it's the best JRPG up until the time of its release. And even if it's not #1 today, it still isn't too far from that spot in my opinion. Few games offer such a complete package, and I'm glad I finally got to experience this game.
I didn't think Chrono Trigger, a 1995 JRPG by Square for the SNES, would live up to the incredibly high expectations I had that came from years and years of reading about how Chrono Trigger is still one of the best JRPGs today, if not one of the best games period. I would stumble upon quite a few of these types of highly praised games, only to have their impact lessened by the expectations going in.
With Chrono Trigger, there were two differences for me. First, I have done this challenge of mine for over a year now, starting all the way back in 1990 and arriving in 1995, having played 110 different games in the process, including over a dozen RPGs. So my expectations for what a great game in the 90s looks like were set rather accurately I'd say.
Second, unlike some of the other older games I would hear about and be slightly disappointed by, Chrono Trigger actually aged incredibly well. It won't make you a fan of the JRPG genre if you've tried many other games and don't enjoy the gameplay loop, but for fans of the genre, I'm gonna go ahead and say that there are few JRPGs out there who are as complete a package as Chrono Trigger. From 1990 to 1995, it's absolutely the best one, and possibly my favorite game as part of this challenge I've played so far. If you call yourself a JRPG fan, do yourself a favor and check this game out.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Chrono Trigger uses a time travel theme for its main story. You play as Crono (or however non-canon name you would like to give him), who looks like a DBZ character in the game's cover, which makes sense since the art designer worked on DBZ as well. The game starts in 1000 A.D. You wake up and go to the fair that is in town, where a local girl named Lucca has a transportation device to showcase, which teleports you from one box to the other right next to it.
An accident happens and a girl you were hanging out with, Marle, is sent into a portal that opened up by the power of her pendant. You choose to be the hero and go after her. Soon after, you realize you are now in 600 A.D. That's all fascinating and stuff, but all you want to do is grab Marle and get out of there. Events transpire, and not much later, you find yourself in the future and uncovering something very dark: The planet is dying. With the power of time travel at your hands, it's up to you and your friends to go back and forward in time to do what's necessary and prevent this horrible death.
What impresses the most about Chrono Trigger's storytelling is that it incorporates time travel and does not end up in a jumbled mess by the end. Quite the opposite actually. The time travel theme gives the story lots of options to explore different settings, events and permutations of said events, which lends itself perfectly to the fact that this game has not one, not two but 13 (!) different endings that differ quite notably from each other based on when and where you take certain actions.
Additionally, Chrono Trigger reaches the impressive feat of having a time travel story make sense overall, while also avoiding being as formulaic as JRPG stories tend to be at this time period. The main villain in this game is really interesting and actually scary as shit the more I think about it, and as someone who loves a good villain, that's awesome, though I won't say much more than that. There are also many other villains of which many were well-explored, and the game has a diverse and charming cast of characters. I found some to be one-dimensional, like Robo or Ayla, but the others have some stand-out moments as part of the main story or their own side stories. I wish there would have been more moments where the entire casts interacts like in one singular scene that I found throughout the whole game, but the game is more focused on its plot, which is well-paced almost throughout, and that makes for a great experience as well.
One final note I want to make is that the game does a really great job at foreshadowing certain events, locations and characters, and when you get to the points where they become relevant, it makes for some of the best moments in the game.
As someone who likes well-developed characters as much as a good plot, I would personally have liked a little bit more in that aspect, but the plot is great, characters are easy to root for and there are at least a couple that do have great backstories and development, so if you're looking for a JRPG who ticks these boxes, Chrono Trigger probably comes up at the top of most lists for a good reason.
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
JRPGs have a pretty well-established gameplay loop, and Chrono Trigger does not distance itself from that either, which is understandable considering it was made by the same company that is reponsible for Final Fantasy, the SaGa series, the Mana series and more. That said, what Chrono Trigger achieves is three-fold.
First, Chrono Trigger makes the loop less grindy and cryptic. I never felt the need to farm XP mindlessly for hours to have a chance at a random mid-game boss. There was one boss fight that was unusually tough, sure, but I beat it by adjusting my strategy and was able to continue through the rest of the game. The game also never forced me to use a guide, which, believe me, means something. There is always that one time in these RPGs where I'm stumped as to where to go or what to do, but with Chrono Trigger, I always figured it out eventually, without fail. Talk to all NPCs and you will definitely find your way forward.
Second, Chrono Trigger introduces quality of life changes and general improvements to the genre. Talk to an NPC accidentally? Just walk away mid dialogue without having to click each line away. Don't want to be thrown into random encounters? You don't have to, enemies almost always appear on the screen and you can often just walk past them. Feel like you're usually missing out on the good skills/weapons in JRPGs because you can't find them? The game has "Techs", which the characters unlock naturally as you use them, which are more than enough to overcome any challenge as long as you use them correctly.
Third, Chrono Trigger avoids filler, at least the SNES version does. It adds a lot to the pacing of the story that you're rarely out there searching for item X to supply to NPC Y to unlock Dungeon Z to find item A to supply NPC B to finally meaningfully progress the story. Yes, there of course is still some of that here, but I can't say it was a chore to go through any dungeon this game had to offer because it was well-balanced with progression of the story and your character, and dungeons usually have unique puzzles for you. Both in actual puzzles and in terms of the battles, where you need to figure out how to "solve" a fight before you actually beat the enemy. Certain enemies for example can block almost all of your physical or magical attacks. That's simple enough. Then there are some who first have to be shocked with a lightning attack before they lower their guard and take damage. These "puzzles" get more and more tricky as the game goes on, up until the final boss fight, where the game throws one final curveball at you, though I'll let you discover that on your own.
At the end of the day though, Chrono Trigger is still a turn-based Square JRPG. If you didn't enjoy these before or especially after Chrono Trigger, the "Tech" skills won't be enough to change your mind. Even to me, watching the same attack animations play out slowly over thousands of times in encounters against much weaker enemies is not very fun but rather something you have to do to get to the next big fight, or something you do as part of solving a dungeon. Square still use their Active Battle System, which I dislike as much as ever because it has 0 to do with strategy and one billion to do with being quick on the buttons like a 12 year old Fortnite player building a castle in four seconds. Losing battles can throw you up to an hour back if you die shortly before getting to your next save point (unless you use save states).
So, to put it short: If you enjoy gameplay in JRPGs, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, you won't here either, but it's the most fun non-Shin Megami Tensei (J)RPG I've played that came out in the 90s so far.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Did you hear that Chrono Trigger has a great soundtrack? Well you heard correctly. I loved this soundtrack from beginning to end. The fair theme and Gato's theme at the start already had me getting earworms for the rest of my first day playing this. The battle theme is great and just doesn't get old. Then there are numerous character and location themes that range from great to perfection. I could name you a dozen songs that I loved and would gladly listen to outside of the game, and others would probably name you another dozen that they remember very fondly. It's a terrific soundtrack and if you want a taste, I recommend you to check out Gato's / Gonzalez's Theme, Secret of the Forest, Guardia Castle, Battle with Magus and probably my favorite, Corridors of Time.
They call me Gato ♪
I have metal joints ♪
Beat me up ♪
And earn 15 silver points ♪
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Thanks to the time travel theme and the many different ages you visit, this game has a ton of visual variety, which helps the game to visually never get stale. Enemy design is great, the world design helps give each age its distinctive properties and while I thought the characters had some weird looks sometimes (Marle doing the squilly face for example), I did like their design as well, though the characters to me stand out a lot more in their avatars than their in-game sprites.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
This game packs so much detail for a game of its time and for any game period. I have one party scene in particular in mind where a unique song just for that scene plays and you got a bunch of characters just dancing as you walk around. I then interacted with Marle, who said something along the lines of "let's party", after which she went over to someone else and started mingling. Talking to her again prompted her to say "let's dance" and she started busting out the moves, and apart from the fact that I interacted with her to prompt these lines and actions, it all felt so natural. Or going to Lucca's home and talking to her mom, only for her dad to show up and then give us an item shortly after. Or the entirety of the millennial fair and how seemingly tiny interactions there are brought up later.
There are tons of small details like that and if you ask me what every great video game has, it is those small details. If you put that much care into those, it's almost a safe bet that the main portion of your game will be quality as well, and that's certainly the case here.
Outside of the details, the game is very atmospheric thanks to its varied locations and use of its songs. Funny thing is, even now a small detail comes to mind, like healing up in the future and getting the "you're still hungry" notification, which is such a small thing but only is added in this era. It helps paint the picture of the life the people who are there are living, and it makes a later moment stand out even more.
CONTENT | 10/10
The game is PACKED with content. It has a lot more content than you will see in one playthrough, that's for sure. It got all the endings, all the different ages, all the different side quests, lots of techs, double techs, triple techs, secret items, optional dungeons, New Game+ (which is a term coined in THIS game) and all those permutations to events you can have depending on your actions, not to mention plenty of bosses, high enemy variety and a ton of interaction that you can have between the ages, which is often optional but rewards you for your time pretty well. If you could only bring one JRPG with you on an island, and you had never played Chrono Trigger, this would keep you busy without you finding all the content in it for quiiite a while.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The pacing in this game is great and the way the game rewards optional exploration is one of the better examples I've ever seen. The fact that grinding is not required even a single bit is a great achievement in itself. If there is one negative I'd have, it's the final dungeon (I played the SNES version, I hear other versions have bad optional dungeons). This dungeon takes a bit too long for my taste and keeps throwing the same enemy at you that disables your tech/items, which turns these battles into boring "Press A and wait for the battle to end" slogs. The final boss form then has a BS attack that insta-kills your party unless they are at full health (2 of my 3 party members died even then), so I didn't enjoy that either, plus the GolemTwins fight was BS, but those would be my only negatives in a game I played for 25+ hours. The least frustrating retro JRPG I've played overall by a mile.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
In many core ways it doesn't differ from contemporary JRPGs, but the time travel mechanic and great pacing help the story stand out, the Tech system is one of the most fun satisfying systems I've experienced in retro JRPGs and the game helped popularize having a lot of different endings and NG+. Even if you are one to play through a game once and that's it, the way you can choose how and when to do things is a terrificly executed in Chrono Trigger.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Don't think I stumbled upon a more replayable game up to this point, Chrono Trigger can be played many times over and present you with vastly different events.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 90/100
Chrono Trigger aged tremendously. If you're a fan of JRPGs and haven't checked this out, I don't even know what to tell you. Is it the best JRPG today? Probably not, but I agree that it's the best JRPG up until the time of its release. And even if it's not #1 today, it still isn't too far from that spot in my opinion. Few games offer such a complete package, and I'm glad I finally got to experience this game.
(This is the 110th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
The Castlevania series is among the few series I'm looking forward to the most as part of this challenge, which is something I wasn't expecting to say after I had a bit of a falling out with Castlevania 3 you could say. But after Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania Bloodlines, you can definitely call me a Castlevania fan. I haven't played any other Castlevania games before in my life, so all of these releases are new to me. Does Castlevania: Dracula X deserve to be praised as highly as the previous two games I've mentioned?
Released in 1995 exclusively for the SNES, Dracula X is supposedly a remake for Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which I didn't play yet (but should according to Castlevania fans everywhere) but based on what I've seen from Rondo of Blood, Dracula X looks like a lite version of it for some reason. The wikipedia entry for Dracula X does say that there were limits of the SNES cartridge format to think in mind as part of this port, so I'm assuming stuff was cut out here. With that in mind, remake seems like an odd term for this game. It seems like a port with updated visuals.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
The Belmont family v Dracula Round #854. This time it's Richter Belmont, who fights Dracula Reborn hundreds of years after Simon Belmont defeated him initially. Dracula lures Richter in by kidnapping his girlfriend and sister, who you can save in Dracula's castle, if you can find them. In Rondo of Blood, the sister I believe becomes a playable character when you find her, while here, only Richter Belmont is playable. That's pretty much it to the story, it's the same as with all Castlevania games up to this point pretty much. You just got Richter, who is added to the Belmont Clan of vampire/Dracula slayers.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Castlevania: Dracula X goes back to the two-directions only approach with Richter Belmont. There also is no other playable character, so you only have access to a character who feels lacking in ability compared to his relatives as a result. Richter brings something new to the table however, which is called "Item Crash", which is basically a super attack. Instead of using one heart to use your normal sub-weapon attack, you can use up many of them at the same time (I believe 10 are used for the axe Item Crash) for one attack that deals more damage. These attacks kind of felt weaker than I would have thought however.
As far as the weapons and sub-weapons go, Richter is equipped with the whip and the sub-weapons he can collect are the same that the other games have also had pretty much. Incidentally, enemies, both normal and bosses, are also re-used from other Castlevania games. Basically it's more 90s Castlevania, which fans will like and people who dislike Castlevania already won't.
There are a total of seven stages (perhaps more if you can find the kidnapped girls, I didn't find them), and each ends with a boss. Boss fights are pretty cool as per usual with the Castlevania series, at least in terms of design and variety in how you have to tackle them, but some of them are pretty unfair. The Dracula boss fight would have been impossible for me to beat if it wasn't for save states on my emulator. You have less than 10 platforms that you can stand on and pretty much every time you get hit, you will drop down into the pit and die. Considering that the final Dracula fight is hard enough usually, you definitely do not need this extra challenge. There also is just not enough space to reliably dodge the attacks and worst of all, Dracula has a targeted fireball attack that you can't reliably time against at all, so I pretty much had to be lucky whenever I whipped to hit the fireballs and make them disappear. Dracula's design was definitely hilarious (absolutely shredded and only wearing a thong) but in a positive way I'd say.
Among the normal enemies, I want to say fuck you to the spear-flipping soldiers who have stupid range and can seemingly block all sub-weapons.
Overall however, as someone who enjoys the Castlevania gameplay loop, this game has one of the more fun gameplay experiences you can have on the SNES (JRPGs excluded) and proves that the Castlevania formula alone can make your game at least somewhat enjoyable. There is the typical SNES / Castlevania / 90s gaming BS moments in this game here, but that's what you have to expect with all Castlevania games that released, at least up until 1995. I'll return to Castlevania with Symphony of the Night, which I've heard lots of positive things about, so maybe the BS meter is lower there.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
The Castlevania series seems to be one where songs are reused regularly and simply remixed in each iteration. As someone who loves Castlevania soundtracks, I'm actually fond of listening to the classics again after a while. Dracula X does have some new songs, at least I didn't recognize every single one, and the ones that were reused are great, so I'm not gonna complain. Whether this is your first or 5th Castlevania game, I'm sure you'll have a great time listening to the soundtrack here. Shoutout to Divine Bloodlines, the first stage song. Just fantastic.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
I really like the visuals in Dracula X. Backgrounds are detailed and set the atmosphere, there are some nice visual effects, enemy design is repeated from many other Castlevania games but looks good, environments are varied, and level of detail is pretty good overall. It's a step back from Super Castlevania IV, which is understandable for a glorified port like this, but it's still one of the more graphically appealing games for its time, both in quality and art design.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically the game places itself right in the middle of all prior Castlevania entries. The gothic-medieval art style that Castlevania is famous for sets the scene in Dracula X just as it always has, and the soundtrack for Castlevania games are probably the best examples the 90s have for music that tells the player to go be a hero. Castlevania has the gameplay to pull the epic music off and not have it awkwardly run counter to the gameplay itself, even if Dracula X is not the prime example for this, but it still works well here.
CONTENT | 5/10
Dracula X's content is, based on my understanding, the same as in Rondo of Blood, just worse and with plenty of content cut. That's certainly a disappointment. The content in this game is certainly enjoyable enough, and the short length does not necessarily work in its detriment, the fact that the original was longer probably does. Because the way the game is set up, you constantly see unique areas and fight bosses pretty quickly after one another, so it flows pretty nicely, although bosses can ruin the fun for sure.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
Levels don't feel repetitive as far as the game itself goes, though obviously you've seen these designs in other Castlevania games already. The difference to a game like Super Castlevania IV is that the game lacks some of the more clever levels like those that made use of SNES' Mode 7. Other than that, you have the typical dangers and challenges to overcome, which is certainly still fun, and as mentioned, they always feel fresh because the number of stages and areas is not on the high side.
That said, some levels have entirely too many enemies that keep spawning and annoying you to no end and too many bosses are not well designed in terms of their fairness.
You can, however, find different routes that lead you to find two of the kidnapped individuals, and with that, find optional bosses, which is pretty nice.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
A game full of FMV scenes that is not a Night Trap-like game but rather a horror adventure game was conceptually unexplored at the time, and looking at how the game turned out, I don't think D managed to get it quite right. That said, I can tell that with the start of the 5th generation of consoles, experimentation is a big theme, so I can appreciate that about D, as well as the fact that it atmospherically did plenty right.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There isn't as much replayability here as in previous Castlevania games. Only one playable character, no real multiple paths to use and not all that many sub-weapons to try. What you do have are 3 different endings depending on how many of the girls you find and a few optional bosses to fight, which adds some replayability.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 64/100
Castlevania: Dracula X is another enjoyable Castlevania game but two factors that work against it is that it is a remake/port of a superior game and that some of the bosses, especially the final one, are ridiculously hard. Overall though, if you don't go into this thinking it should be Rondo of Blood, the soundtrack and the typical Castlevania gameplay loop is still challenging and fun for at least a few hours.
The Castlevania series is among the few series I'm looking forward to the most as part of this challenge, which is something I wasn't expecting to say after I had a bit of a falling out with Castlevania 3 you could say. But after Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania Bloodlines, you can definitely call me a Castlevania fan. I haven't played any other Castlevania games before in my life, so all of these releases are new to me. Does Castlevania: Dracula X deserve to be praised as highly as the previous two games I've mentioned?
Released in 1995 exclusively for the SNES, Dracula X is supposedly a remake for Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, which I didn't play yet (but should according to Castlevania fans everywhere) but based on what I've seen from Rondo of Blood, Dracula X looks like a lite version of it for some reason. The wikipedia entry for Dracula X does say that there were limits of the SNES cartridge format to think in mind as part of this port, so I'm assuming stuff was cut out here. With that in mind, remake seems like an odd term for this game. It seems like a port with updated visuals.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 2/10
The Belmont family v Dracula Round #854. This time it's Richter Belmont, who fights Dracula Reborn hundreds of years after Simon Belmont defeated him initially. Dracula lures Richter in by kidnapping his girlfriend and sister, who you can save in Dracula's castle, if you can find them. In Rondo of Blood, the sister I believe becomes a playable character when you find her, while here, only Richter Belmont is playable. That's pretty much it to the story, it's the same as with all Castlevania games up to this point pretty much. You just got Richter, who is added to the Belmont Clan of vampire/Dracula slayers.
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Castlevania: Dracula X goes back to the two-directions only approach with Richter Belmont. There also is no other playable character, so you only have access to a character who feels lacking in ability compared to his relatives as a result. Richter brings something new to the table however, which is called "Item Crash", which is basically a super attack. Instead of using one heart to use your normal sub-weapon attack, you can use up many of them at the same time (I believe 10 are used for the axe Item Crash) for one attack that deals more damage. These attacks kind of felt weaker than I would have thought however.
As far as the weapons and sub-weapons go, Richter is equipped with the whip and the sub-weapons he can collect are the same that the other games have also had pretty much. Incidentally, enemies, both normal and bosses, are also re-used from other Castlevania games. Basically it's more 90s Castlevania, which fans will like and people who dislike Castlevania already won't.
There are a total of seven stages (perhaps more if you can find the kidnapped girls, I didn't find them), and each ends with a boss. Boss fights are pretty cool as per usual with the Castlevania series, at least in terms of design and variety in how you have to tackle them, but some of them are pretty unfair. The Dracula boss fight would have been impossible for me to beat if it wasn't for save states on my emulator. You have less than 10 platforms that you can stand on and pretty much every time you get hit, you will drop down into the pit and die. Considering that the final Dracula fight is hard enough usually, you definitely do not need this extra challenge. There also is just not enough space to reliably dodge the attacks and worst of all, Dracula has a targeted fireball attack that you can't reliably time against at all, so I pretty much had to be lucky whenever I whipped to hit the fireballs and make them disappear. Dracula's design was definitely hilarious (absolutely shredded and only wearing a thong) but in a positive way I'd say.
Among the normal enemies, I want to say fuck you to the spear-flipping soldiers who have stupid range and can seemingly block all sub-weapons.
Overall however, as someone who enjoys the Castlevania gameplay loop, this game has one of the more fun gameplay experiences you can have on the SNES (JRPGs excluded) and proves that the Castlevania formula alone can make your game at least somewhat enjoyable. There is the typical SNES / Castlevania / 90s gaming BS moments in this game here, but that's what you have to expect with all Castlevania games that released, at least up until 1995. I'll return to Castlevania with Symphony of the Night, which I've heard lots of positive things about, so maybe the BS meter is lower there.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
The Castlevania series seems to be one where songs are reused regularly and simply remixed in each iteration. As someone who loves Castlevania soundtracks, I'm actually fond of listening to the classics again after a while. Dracula X does have some new songs, at least I didn't recognize every single one, and the ones that were reused are great, so I'm not gonna complain. Whether this is your first or 5th Castlevania game, I'm sure you'll have a great time listening to the soundtrack here. Shoutout to Divine Bloodlines, the first stage song. Just fantastic.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
I really like the visuals in Dracula X. Backgrounds are detailed and set the atmosphere, there are some nice visual effects, enemy design is repeated from many other Castlevania games but looks good, environments are varied, and level of detail is pretty good overall. It's a step back from Super Castlevania IV, which is understandable for a glorified port like this, but it's still one of the more graphically appealing games for its time, both in quality and art design.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
Atmospherically the game places itself right in the middle of all prior Castlevania entries. The gothic-medieval art style that Castlevania is famous for sets the scene in Dracula X just as it always has, and the soundtrack for Castlevania games are probably the best examples the 90s have for music that tells the player to go be a hero. Castlevania has the gameplay to pull the epic music off and not have it awkwardly run counter to the gameplay itself, even if Dracula X is not the prime example for this, but it still works well here.
CONTENT | 5/10
Dracula X's content is, based on my understanding, the same as in Rondo of Blood, just worse and with plenty of content cut. That's certainly a disappointment. The content in this game is certainly enjoyable enough, and the short length does not necessarily work in its detriment, the fact that the original was longer probably does. Because the way the game is set up, you constantly see unique areas and fight bosses pretty quickly after one another, so it flows pretty nicely, although bosses can ruin the fun for sure.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 6/10
Levels don't feel repetitive as far as the game itself goes, though obviously you've seen these designs in other Castlevania games already. The difference to a game like Super Castlevania IV is that the game lacks some of the more clever levels like those that made use of SNES' Mode 7. Other than that, you have the typical dangers and challenges to overcome, which is certainly still fun, and as mentioned, they always feel fresh because the number of stages and areas is not on the high side.
That said, some levels have entirely too many enemies that keep spawning and annoying you to no end and too many bosses are not well designed in terms of their fairness.
You can, however, find different routes that lead you to find two of the kidnapped individuals, and with that, find optional bosses, which is pretty nice.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
A game full of FMV scenes that is not a Night Trap-like game but rather a horror adventure game was conceptually unexplored at the time, and looking at how the game turned out, I don't think D managed to get it quite right. That said, I can tell that with the start of the 5th generation of consoles, experimentation is a big theme, so I can appreciate that about D, as well as the fact that it atmospherically did plenty right.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There isn't as much replayability here as in previous Castlevania games. Only one playable character, no real multiple paths to use and not all that many sub-weapons to try. What you do have are 3 different endings depending on how many of the girls you find and a few optional bosses to fight, which adds some replayability.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 64/100
Castlevania: Dracula X is another enjoyable Castlevania game but two factors that work against it is that it is a remake/port of a superior game and that some of the bosses, especially the final one, are ridiculously hard. Overall though, if you don't go into this thinking it should be Rondo of Blood, the soundtrack and the typical Castlevania gameplay loop is still challenging and fun for at least a few hours.
(This is the 109th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Full Throttle was LucasArts' 11th adventure game and originally released in May, 1995. In 2017, the Remastered version released. It's got updated visuals, sound and QoL improvements, and in typical LucasArts Remaster fashion, you can switch to original visuals with the click of a button whenever you want. It's got dev commentary as well, which makes this remaster a nice little package for a game that you'd be hard-pressed to run on modern computers otherwise. Having beaten the game for the first time, I can say that it's definitely a worthy purchase for adventure game fans. That said, I'd be shocked if adventure game fans haven't played it already anyway. For those curious about the genre and who got enticed by the biker gang theme of the game, is it equally worth it?
Well, apart from the theme and some of the game's distinct features, it's mainly a typical LucasArts adventure. It's shorter than some at a 4-5 hour run time if you watch all cutscenes but what you do in this game follows the formula pretty much. You engage in puzzles that become more and more difficult over time, talk to NPCs and try to progress forward by combining these two parts of the game. These games are notorious for having unintuitive / illogical solutions to puzzles at least once in each of them, and Full Throttle is no exception unfortunately, but it's certainly one of the least egregious examples in LucasArts' catalogue I think. Still, there is one part where you have to ride around in your bike and engage in bike combat, which is a unique feature for this game, and figure out how to defeat each biker by beating one first, getting their weapon and then using that to defeat another. One biker for example is only susceptible to fertilizer, and another to a 2x4, and each failed attempt means waiting for 15+ seconds until the next biker shows up. Another part has you figuring out how to get past a minefield. The solution involves bunnies and it's pretty odd. Finally there is also a part where you find yourself on fire. I won't add much more to it other than what you have to do there is oddly specific and you'll figure the solution out by accident rather than logical deduction.
Still, I thought most solutions were easy enough to figure out and progression overall was much smoother for me than in Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle or their Indiana Jones game. This alongside its runtime work in favor of the story, which feels much better paced and includes less filler than usual. This comes at the expense of fewer characters that you meet than in other adventures of theirs, and I didn't find them to be as memorable.
The plot itself is also pretty simple. You play as the main character Ben, who is the leader of a biker gang called "Polecats" and who plans to stop the evil plan of one Adrian Ripburger, who plans to take over a motorcycle manufacturer and make them manufacture mini-vans, which is obviously a disgusting suggesting as far as Ben is concerned. Ripburger's actions are much more evil than his means however, and he frames Ben for his terrible acts to boot, so Ben has no choice but to put an end to Ripburger's plot. It's rather cliché and simple, as I said, but if you're into bikes and biker gang culture or just appreciate a story about a alpha, badass, funny one-liner spouting character, Full Throttle should scratch an itch for a couple afternoons.
OVERALL | 69/100
There isn't really much else to say about a game like this. If you know LucasArts games, you know them all kind of, at least from this time period. They have different themes but follow a very similar formula and it worked at the time. In modern times, with so many more games to choose from than in the 90s, where your gaming library probably consisted of just a couple games, it might be hard for you to stick to a game that will undoubtedly have you stuck at times trying to find a weird solution. If you didn't like it in other LucasArts games, you won't like it here, but if you did, then Full Throttle is more of the same with a different theme put on. It's a theme that works, which makes this a enjoyable game to play in my opinion.
Full Throttle was LucasArts' 11th adventure game and originally released in May, 1995. In 2017, the Remastered version released. It's got updated visuals, sound and QoL improvements, and in typical LucasArts Remaster fashion, you can switch to original visuals with the click of a button whenever you want. It's got dev commentary as well, which makes this remaster a nice little package for a game that you'd be hard-pressed to run on modern computers otherwise. Having beaten the game for the first time, I can say that it's definitely a worthy purchase for adventure game fans. That said, I'd be shocked if adventure game fans haven't played it already anyway. For those curious about the genre and who got enticed by the biker gang theme of the game, is it equally worth it?
Well, apart from the theme and some of the game's distinct features, it's mainly a typical LucasArts adventure. It's shorter than some at a 4-5 hour run time if you watch all cutscenes but what you do in this game follows the formula pretty much. You engage in puzzles that become more and more difficult over time, talk to NPCs and try to progress forward by combining these two parts of the game. These games are notorious for having unintuitive / illogical solutions to puzzles at least once in each of them, and Full Throttle is no exception unfortunately, but it's certainly one of the least egregious examples in LucasArts' catalogue I think. Still, there is one part where you have to ride around in your bike and engage in bike combat, which is a unique feature for this game, and figure out how to defeat each biker by beating one first, getting their weapon and then using that to defeat another. One biker for example is only susceptible to fertilizer, and another to a 2x4, and each failed attempt means waiting for 15+ seconds until the next biker shows up. Another part has you figuring out how to get past a minefield. The solution involves bunnies and it's pretty odd. Finally there is also a part where you find yourself on fire. I won't add much more to it other than what you have to do there is oddly specific and you'll figure the solution out by accident rather than logical deduction.
Still, I thought most solutions were easy enough to figure out and progression overall was much smoother for me than in Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle or their Indiana Jones game. This alongside its runtime work in favor of the story, which feels much better paced and includes less filler than usual. This comes at the expense of fewer characters that you meet than in other adventures of theirs, and I didn't find them to be as memorable.
The plot itself is also pretty simple. You play as the main character Ben, who is the leader of a biker gang called "Polecats" and who plans to stop the evil plan of one Adrian Ripburger, who plans to take over a motorcycle manufacturer and make them manufacture mini-vans, which is obviously a disgusting suggesting as far as Ben is concerned. Ripburger's actions are much more evil than his means however, and he frames Ben for his terrible acts to boot, so Ben has no choice but to put an end to Ripburger's plot. It's rather cliché and simple, as I said, but if you're into bikes and biker gang culture or just appreciate a story about a alpha, badass, funny one-liner spouting character, Full Throttle should scratch an itch for a couple afternoons.
OVERALL | 69/100
There isn't really much else to say about a game like this. If you know LucasArts games, you know them all kind of, at least from this time period. They have different themes but follow a very similar formula and it worked at the time. In modern times, with so many more games to choose from than in the 90s, where your gaming library probably consisted of just a couple games, it might be hard for you to stick to a game that will undoubtedly have you stuck at times trying to find a weird solution. If you didn't like it in other LucasArts games, you won't like it here, but if you did, then Full Throttle is more of the same with a different theme put on. It's a theme that works, which makes this a enjoyable game to play in my opinion.
1995
(This is the 108th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
You probably know about Heavy Rain's JASON and SHAUN. Now get ready for D's Laura. Laura. LAURA... Laura. If you can appreciate the hilarity inherent in low poly character models coupled with the developers trying to give them serious, vivid expressions, D will have plenty of stuff to laugh at for you.
D, yes, just D, is an interactive horror game that initially released for the 3DO in April 1995 and later was released for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and MS-DOS, as well as Steam and GOG decades later, where it's still available today. It's a game in which you control the main character through FMV sequences. Each time you choose to walk in a direction, a video plays moving the character in that direction, so there are only a limited number of spots in each room your character can stand in.
The director of this game is a pretty interesting character in his own right. Named Kenji Eno, he has done some wild shit during his time as a video game developer. For starters, he added some violent and pretty dark elements to the game, which he removed in a "clean version" shown to the publisher. Getting the game approved due to that, he then swapped out the clean version for the actual, violent/dark version on his way to the manufacturer, which is why we got that stuff in the game.
When the game released for the PS1, Sony did not print enough copies to match the pre-orders, which upset him so much that he exclusively released games on Sega platforms from then on. When presenting his next game at a SONY press conference, yes Sony, he showed a Sony logo warping into the Sega Saturn logo and announced the game would be a Sega Saturn exclusive. Again, AT A SONY PRESS CONFERENCE.
He also shipped condoms with one of his games "Short Warp" and probably even more wild shit I didn't find. Definitely quite a character, but his games, if they are anything like D, and they seem to be, are certainly not of the highest objective quality. He unfortunately passed in 2013 at the very young age of 42.
D is certainly a unique game for this time period where distinct video games releases and overall innovation were seemingly non-stop occurences, so let's see what it brought to the table.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
The game starts with an opening cutscene showing us a hospital at which a revered doctor turned into a mass murderer. Some text explains this to us alongside an awkward scene depicting a man with overly long limbs shooting a handgun with some weird looking recoil on it. Anyway, the text goes on to say that the daughter of his, Laura Harris, gets a message by the LAPD that her father went on a mass murdering spree, so get this, she rushes to the scene in her sports car and just rushes into the hospital while the LAPD just chills outside at their cars trying to contact the man, not giving a single fudge that a young woman puts herself in insane danger by going into the hospital on her own. When I tell you that video game developers trying their hand at storytelling during this era of games will be quite an awkward struggle, I'm probably understating that by quite a bit. All the more impressive what Kojima is about to do just 3 years later.
Back to the story. Laura gets into the hospital but gets teleported to some sort of castle where she is met with quite a task. Solve the mystery in two hours (no save points, no pauses) or start over. Here is where the game begins and you start doing a bunch of puzzles to find your way to your father, who regularly interrupts Laura by saying "Laura...Laura...LAURA", showing up in warped-head form, and telling her to not come closer.
It's a story that makes little sense, so unpacking it will do your enjoyment all harm and no good. Know that the poor voice acting makes the experience funny at times but it's not a priority for this game where atmosphere is more important to the experience.
GAMEPLAY | 8/20
The game, as explained, has you control Laura by clicking buttons on a directional pad to turn and move through FMV sequences that play out whenever you press something. If you get closer to an item you can interact with, click the circle button and a short scene plays out, such as Laura looking into a bowl that turns into a pool of blood, or a hand coming at you out of a mirror or Laura opening a door. That's pretty much it. You walk around and interact with stuff in a puzzle game / point and click adventure type fashion.
It gets the job done and the walking motion is quite cinematic, which adds to the feel of the game, but your interaction with the game is primarily solving puzzles and watching Laura as she veeeeery slowly executes your solutions and opens up her mouth wide to express surprise, shock or horror no matter what happens.
There are some sections that are slow and some that are even slower, but you should still be more than OK with the 2 hour time limit. At worst, it will take you two tries I'd predict.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
The voice acting here is twofold. You have Laura breathing heavily whenever she is scared and you have Laura's dad, the murderer, doing all the talking. It's pretty bad overall. The sound design gave me mixed impressions, as some sounds added to the atmosphere well and some didn't really sound all that accurate, like turning a handle early on in the game, which sounds like some developer letting himself get kicked in the nuts and squealing in pain. The soundtrack has a limited number of tracks in it, and they're OK. The game mostly lives on atmospheric sounds, such as the gong that you hear throughout the first area alongside some static noise. Music plays during interactions or other cutscenes do amplify the horror in a situation, and I think it does a solid job there, typical to any horror movie of that time you'd watch.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
You have many ways you can feel about the visuals in this game. On the one hand, you have the cinematic feeling of the FMV sequences, which are relatively well made actually. You got the aesthetic of the castle, the disgusting nature of all the bodies and the flashback scenes and also some of the animation as positives. The walking sequence also adds a lot to make the visual experience more distinct.
On the other hand, the character models lend themselves to hilarity, whether it's the overgrown limbs of the murderer, the Dwayne The Rock Johnson-esque shoulders on Laura or the exaggerated expressions on her face. Then there are the blurry textures and the 15 FPS the game runs in, which will dampen the experience depending on your sensitivity to that.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
The atmosphere and immersion are the main priorities in this game, and I feel like the game does a solid job in that regard for the most part. The voice acting and character models can unintentionally make the game funny rather than scary, but depending on how susceptible you are to being frightened in horror games and the age you play this game at, you might actually get really scared by the game. The retro look and feel to it also amplifies that in these games I feel.
If you're wondering, the game does not kill you, but has plenty of jumpscares and near-death experiences in store for you, both optional and mandatory to experience, and there is one singular QTE fighting scene. You get these events nearly all the time, so tension is high throughout. It'll all depend on your tolerance. It's no Resident Evil 1 or Silent Hill 1 which would release for the PS1 in later years, but it definitely can be scary and disturbing.
CONTENT | 6/10
Content does not mean the game needs to have a lot of it. If the game takes only 2 hours to beat, how does it fill those two hours? Well, D has you running around doing puzzles, which is a straightforward process for the most part, but the castle is also filled with lots of optional areas to go into which will give you some scenes that you don't have to see. So both the mandatory and optional content is designed to have you on the edge of your seat as you figure out a way forward, and I don't think there is much wrong with that for a game like this. Execution lacks sometimes though.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Moving around is a slooow process, which drags down the experience a bit. Then there is the rotation room, where you need to rotate a wheel around and then turn around and see which of 5 available doors opened. This happens randomly and seemingly 8 out of 10 times, you get a brick wall to appear, which means you can't enter that at all. You need to enter the remaining doors in a specific order, so you will be stuck for many minutes overall trying for the right door to appear. Rotate, turn around to check on the door, see that it's the wrong door, turn back around to the wheel, rotate again, turn around to check on the door etc. It's a really dumb level and takes over a third of the time you will spend on the game. Other than that, you got rather simple puzzles to solve, and that's that.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
A game full of FMV scenes that is not a Night Trap-like game but rather a horror adventure game was conceptually unexplored at the time, and looking at how the game turned out, I don't think D managed to get it quite right. That said, I can tell that with the start of the 5th generation of consoles, experimentation is a big theme, so I can appreciate that about D, as well as the fact that it atmospherically did plenty right.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
There is a good ending that you can impact at the last scene. Do a specific something and you'll get it. Don't do it and you'll get a bad ending. Exceed the two hour time limit and you get a game over ending. Then there are plenty of optional rooms to open and cutscenes to watch. I'd say those are kind of worth the second playthrough if you really enjoy the game, but no replayability here otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well, but the 15 FPS and the slow pace of it all makes it a slog to play through at times.
OVERALL | 53/100
I don't think the game is worth playing today because what it aims for has been done better by many of the horror games we consider mediocre these days. D doesn't stand out in any way anymore, but if you do see yourself as a retro (horror) games fan, D is probably a niche title you could get a bit of enjoyment out of for its 2 hour run time.
You probably know about Heavy Rain's JASON and SHAUN. Now get ready for D's Laura. Laura. LAURA... Laura. If you can appreciate the hilarity inherent in low poly character models coupled with the developers trying to give them serious, vivid expressions, D will have plenty of stuff to laugh at for you.
D, yes, just D, is an interactive horror game that initially released for the 3DO in April 1995 and later was released for the Sega Saturn, PlayStation and MS-DOS, as well as Steam and GOG decades later, where it's still available today. It's a game in which you control the main character through FMV sequences. Each time you choose to walk in a direction, a video plays moving the character in that direction, so there are only a limited number of spots in each room your character can stand in.
The director of this game is a pretty interesting character in his own right. Named Kenji Eno, he has done some wild shit during his time as a video game developer. For starters, he added some violent and pretty dark elements to the game, which he removed in a "clean version" shown to the publisher. Getting the game approved due to that, he then swapped out the clean version for the actual, violent/dark version on his way to the manufacturer, which is why we got that stuff in the game.
When the game released for the PS1, Sony did not print enough copies to match the pre-orders, which upset him so much that he exclusively released games on Sega platforms from then on. When presenting his next game at a SONY press conference, yes Sony, he showed a Sony logo warping into the Sega Saturn logo and announced the game would be a Sega Saturn exclusive. Again, AT A SONY PRESS CONFERENCE.
He also shipped condoms with one of his games "Short Warp" and probably even more wild shit I didn't find. Definitely quite a character, but his games, if they are anything like D, and they seem to be, are certainly not of the highest objective quality. He unfortunately passed in 2013 at the very young age of 42.
D is certainly a unique game for this time period where distinct video games releases and overall innovation were seemingly non-stop occurences, so let's see what it brought to the table.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 3/10
The game starts with an opening cutscene showing us a hospital at which a revered doctor turned into a mass murderer. Some text explains this to us alongside an awkward scene depicting a man with overly long limbs shooting a handgun with some weird looking recoil on it. Anyway, the text goes on to say that the daughter of his, Laura Harris, gets a message by the LAPD that her father went on a mass murdering spree, so get this, she rushes to the scene in her sports car and just rushes into the hospital while the LAPD just chills outside at their cars trying to contact the man, not giving a single fudge that a young woman puts herself in insane danger by going into the hospital on her own. When I tell you that video game developers trying their hand at storytelling during this era of games will be quite an awkward struggle, I'm probably understating that by quite a bit. All the more impressive what Kojima is about to do just 3 years later.
Back to the story. Laura gets into the hospital but gets teleported to some sort of castle where she is met with quite a task. Solve the mystery in two hours (no save points, no pauses) or start over. Here is where the game begins and you start doing a bunch of puzzles to find your way to your father, who regularly interrupts Laura by saying "Laura...Laura...LAURA", showing up in warped-head form, and telling her to not come closer.
It's a story that makes little sense, so unpacking it will do your enjoyment all harm and no good. Know that the poor voice acting makes the experience funny at times but it's not a priority for this game where atmosphere is more important to the experience.
GAMEPLAY | 8/20
The game, as explained, has you control Laura by clicking buttons on a directional pad to turn and move through FMV sequences that play out whenever you press something. If you get closer to an item you can interact with, click the circle button and a short scene plays out, such as Laura looking into a bowl that turns into a pool of blood, or a hand coming at you out of a mirror or Laura opening a door. That's pretty much it. You walk around and interact with stuff in a puzzle game / point and click adventure type fashion.
It gets the job done and the walking motion is quite cinematic, which adds to the feel of the game, but your interaction with the game is primarily solving puzzles and watching Laura as she veeeeery slowly executes your solutions and opens up her mouth wide to express surprise, shock or horror no matter what happens.
There are some sections that are slow and some that are even slower, but you should still be more than OK with the 2 hour time limit. At worst, it will take you two tries I'd predict.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 6/10
The voice acting here is twofold. You have Laura breathing heavily whenever she is scared and you have Laura's dad, the murderer, doing all the talking. It's pretty bad overall. The sound design gave me mixed impressions, as some sounds added to the atmosphere well and some didn't really sound all that accurate, like turning a handle early on in the game, which sounds like some developer letting himself get kicked in the nuts and squealing in pain. The soundtrack has a limited number of tracks in it, and they're OK. The game mostly lives on atmospheric sounds, such as the gong that you hear throughout the first area alongside some static noise. Music plays during interactions or other cutscenes do amplify the horror in a situation, and I think it does a solid job there, typical to any horror movie of that time you'd watch.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
You have many ways you can feel about the visuals in this game. On the one hand, you have the cinematic feeling of the FMV sequences, which are relatively well made actually. You got the aesthetic of the castle, the disgusting nature of all the bodies and the flashback scenes and also some of the animation as positives. The walking sequence also adds a lot to make the visual experience more distinct.
On the other hand, the character models lend themselves to hilarity, whether it's the overgrown limbs of the murderer, the Dwayne The Rock Johnson-esque shoulders on Laura or the exaggerated expressions on her face. Then there are the blurry textures and the 15 FPS the game runs in, which will dampen the experience depending on your sensitivity to that.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 8/10
The atmosphere and immersion are the main priorities in this game, and I feel like the game does a solid job in that regard for the most part. The voice acting and character models can unintentionally make the game funny rather than scary, but depending on how susceptible you are to being frightened in horror games and the age you play this game at, you might actually get really scared by the game. The retro look and feel to it also amplifies that in these games I feel.
If you're wondering, the game does not kill you, but has plenty of jumpscares and near-death experiences in store for you, both optional and mandatory to experience, and there is one singular QTE fighting scene. You get these events nearly all the time, so tension is high throughout. It'll all depend on your tolerance. It's no Resident Evil 1 or Silent Hill 1 which would release for the PS1 in later years, but it definitely can be scary and disturbing.
CONTENT | 6/10
Content does not mean the game needs to have a lot of it. If the game takes only 2 hours to beat, how does it fill those two hours? Well, D has you running around doing puzzles, which is a straightforward process for the most part, but the castle is also filled with lots of optional areas to go into which will give you some scenes that you don't have to see. So both the mandatory and optional content is designed to have you on the edge of your seat as you figure out a way forward, and I don't think there is much wrong with that for a game like this. Execution lacks sometimes though.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Moving around is a slooow process, which drags down the experience a bit. Then there is the rotation room, where you need to rotate a wheel around and then turn around and see which of 5 available doors opened. This happens randomly and seemingly 8 out of 10 times, you get a brick wall to appear, which means you can't enter that at all. You need to enter the remaining doors in a specific order, so you will be stuck for many minutes overall trying for the right door to appear. Rotate, turn around to check on the door, see that it's the wrong door, turn back around to the wheel, rotate again, turn around to check on the door etc. It's a really dumb level and takes over a third of the time you will spend on the game. Other than that, you got rather simple puzzles to solve, and that's that.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 4/10
A game full of FMV scenes that is not a Night Trap-like game but rather a horror adventure game was conceptually unexplored at the time, and looking at how the game turned out, I don't think D managed to get it quite right. That said, I can tell that with the start of the 5th generation of consoles, experimentation is a big theme, so I can appreciate that about D, as well as the fact that it atmospherically did plenty right.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
There is a good ending that you can impact at the last scene. Do a specific something and you'll get it. Don't do it and you'll get a bad ending. Exceed the two hour time limit and you get a game over ending. Then there are plenty of optional rooms to open and cutscenes to watch. I'd say those are kind of worth the second playthrough if you really enjoy the game, but no replayability here otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 4/5
Works well, but the 15 FPS and the slow pace of it all makes it a slog to play through at times.
OVERALL | 53/100
I don't think the game is worth playing today because what it aims for has been done better by many of the horror games we consider mediocre these days. D doesn't stand out in any way anymore, but if you do see yourself as a retro (horror) games fan, D is probably a niche title you could get a bit of enjoyment out of for its 2 hour run time.