Resident Evil

Hey Folks. I'm back. My hiatus has been a series of headaches, paid writing work and penning Episode 2 of the impending Noir Horror radio show I will be producing, Fiends and Flatfoots. Those excuses aside, I felt I got to make it up to my readers. So what kind of pain should I endure? The pervy standings of Jesus Franco? Nah, not enough agony. Godfrey Ho movie? Well I am editing Robovampire for Rotten Reelz Reviews Video Reviews on YouTube so no. Perhaps a Bruno Mattei movie? Then as though a bolt of lightning charged through, it hit me. I must endure the burden of Barry Burton. That's right! Old school tank controls, lines delivered so awesomely bad and the forever pornographic term, Jill Sandwich. This is Resident Evil.

Jill Sandwich? OMG that is filthy!

A Capcom treasure for so many, brought to us by Shinji Mikami (Resident Evil 1,2,3, Dino Crisis 1,2, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Resident Evil Zero and Resident Evil 4) in 1996 for Sega Saturn, Play Station, Windows and Nintendo DS. And yes yes yes, nerds. It is called Biohazard in Japan. Frankly a better and more descriptive title. HAPPY?! Now shuddup. Gotta get my Barry on.

Bravo Team of S.T.A.R.S. (Special Tactics and Rescue Service) lost control of their helicopter. It was on the H train. The helicopter crashed and no one has heard anything of them for several hours. Alpha team moves in to conduct the investigation, locate Beta team and find out what's all the hooting and hollering on about, eh?

Hope I get Frost's stereo after he's Zomberman chow.

Set in the time of July 8, 1998 a bizarre rash of murders have broken out around the fictional Midwestern town of Raccoon City. God the name alone. How do you take RCPD seriously at all? Moving on, Alpha team leader Captain Albert Wesker leads his band of special forces and tactical weapons experts in the the woods past Spencer Mansion only to lose the first red shirt, Joseph Frost. The team's pilot Brad Vickers goes complete wuss, fires up the choppa and abandons the whole team and dammit if he isn't getting a hot poker in the ass later.

The team is ambushed by zombie dobermans (Zombermans, you're welcome) and they flee to the nearest structure, the Spencer mansion. Now at this point of this single-player survival horror you can be former Air Forces spec ops, Chris Redfield or former Delta Force, sneak thief and gets waaay more ammo Jill Valentine. FYI, she can pick tricky locks in the mansion and doesn't have to waste time looking for small keys. "The Master of Unlocking!" Oh Barry, how your dulcet tones can make me cringe.

Lockpick?

I chose the Jill route so throughout the cut scenes she is paired up with former SWAT(Special Weapons and Tactics) vet and weapons specialist for STARS Barry Burton. Whose line delivery are as deemed, awesomely bad. Yeah hit YouTube, get the original game walkthrough with no chatter and listen to the Jill scenarios as Barry gives us such gems of utter oddity. 

 For those not clued in the Norwegian voice actor Barry Gjerde worked as a translator in Japan and lent his voice for Clock Tower, Soar High! Isami, Fastening Days, Bloody Roar and Mega Man X7 (Red).

Bear in mind, Barry doesn't defend Jill throughout the game and she is 100% bad ass. Okay a few spoilers...Hey! You had 20 years! Suck it up. The mansion has catacombs, secret caverns, hideouts and highly illegal labs conducting experiments with the T-Virus, a highly contagious and mutagenic bio-weapon or agent. Experiments were conducted on plants, animals and insects creating twisted works...oh what's the line? "He tampered in God's domain." 

With these results, Umbrella Corporation will be using them as bio-weapons to sell at the highest bidder and TAKE OVER ZE VERLD!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! They could also just want to improve their stock portfolio. So there's that.   Can you even fathom the company picnics?  Sir? The Zombermans are loose at the playground.

With random encounters of giant bugs, zombies, lizard creatures called hunters, not everything is as it seems. Betrayal! Corporate overhead! Super soldier creations known as Tyrant, Jill or Chris has some serious issues. For some reason you cannot put items down you pick up so I really hope you needed that defense dagger. Yeah these bizarre happenings is just one of the factors that makes the game a bit odd with its dynamics. Also apparently a size 10 boot can't kick down a door.

Chris' item slots is an amount of 6 to Jill's 8. Chris' campaign is more difficult which yeah a bit sexist. Jill is one of my favorite video game protagonists...so after Paul W.S. Anderson's Resident Evil: Apocalypse, imagine how thrilled I was. Go ahead. I'll wait.

For further mishaps on Bravo Team, look into Resident Evil Zero. Be warned continuity is very tricky in this franchise. I mean not to the level of the Resident Evil movies or God help you, the Highlander franchise but it does get a bit screwy. Also check out the paperback novels of the Resident Evil by S.D. Perry. Pretty entertaining.

Man, that hall rug is gonna need serious steam cleaning.

Resident Evil 2

And I am back folks. Sorry about last week, I needed to scrounge funds for much needed services. So I attempted a poll last week and only two responded. Again I am on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and I will be adding more polls to vote on at a later date. As mentioned, the poll was for two survival horror games due to I haven't written on any video games in some time annnnd... I screwed up. I already reviewed Silent Hill 2.  Whoops. This is Resident Evil 2.

Cheryl? oh wait, wrong franchise.

With the same if not greater love, 1998 sees the puzzles, exploration and single-player survival horror and game wise, is two months after the original. Our story lines follow Rookie Cop Leon Kennedy and college student Claire Redfield. Claire, sister of Chris Redfield is in town trying to find out the whereabouts of brother Chris. I personally own the N64 version of this.

On his first day of duty and decked out in riot gear, Leon starts his patrol, attacked by zombies and joins up with Claire on the way to Raccoon Police Department. The two decide to split up and make their way through the police station, previously an art museum they look for supplies, ammo and survivors. Chris finds and encounters Ada Wong, claiming to look for an Umbrella researcher John.

While evidence of political maneuvering, bribes and more than a handful of notes, it is pretty obvious that Umbrella Corp. Is back to its old tricks again. No hard evidence of the events with Spencer Mansion, Alpha and Bravo company of S.T.A.R.S.and all the T-Virus zombies, Chris makes his way to Europe to trace and expose Umbrella's misdoings.

That is one moody looking lesbian.

Once again, herbs of green, blue and red treat the zombie attacks, first aid bandages and first aid spray are also at the ready. Ammo, weapon mods, tank controls (D-pad or direction movement) and fixed camera angles, the mood and atmosphere is decidedly horror. With two playable characters you have scenarios with different puzzles and storylines vary. With Leon Kennedy A, Claire Redfield B, Claire Redfield A and Leon Kennedy B, allows for a different of events unfolding and each offer a unique story. Claire's storyline involves her meeting up and protecting a little girl, Sherry Birkin (Daughter of scientists William and Annette) has been left behind during the zombie outbreak.

With the same dangers of mass mutations similar to the T-Virus, the G-Virus or Golgotha developed by Birkin was attempting to give its host a regenerative property. Naturally the military applications means an unkillable soldier and an eugenics program. Twisting God's work and shocked of the horrible outcome. An massive Tyrant monster has been sent to RCPD to clean up any of the survivors so they don't get a chance to explain what truly happened and unravel the existing cover story. William Birkin near fatally wounded by Umbrella Corp mercenaries for not giving up the G-Virus, he doses himself with a large amount of the very same substance, giving his body wild levels of mutations and yup you guessed it, main boss battles.

So yes levels of creatures of the Lickers, Zombies, Plant monsters, a Tyrant known as Mr. X, things are pretty full. Now my major pet peeve is still the inexcusable need for puzzles and we have to take it as red that the architect that made Spencer Manor, clearly had a hand in deciding the museum. Still love the fact the RCPD managed to acquire the museum as some sort of tax write-off for the city.

With the remake made 21 years later and the graphics and characters look amazing, this was the version that got me truly interested in the series.

Amusing side note, George Romero directed the commercial for Biohazard 2 a.k.a. Resident Evil 2 and he also wrote a screenplay for Resident Evil film...and yet Capcom went with Paul W.S. Anderson's nonsense.

Bloody stairs you get locked up on.

Free-to-Play Reappearance: Spooky's House of Jumpscares

Howdy all and welcome to Day 4 of Free-to-Play. Well yesterday was my birthday and my girlfriend was insistent on not working on said day so I felt the same and skipped the blog. So with that in mind, I decided to give today a whirl. The tagline for this game was too funny and I could not resist. Can you survive 1000 rooms of cute terror? Or will you break once the cuteness starts to fade off and your running for your life from the unspeakable hideous being that shake and writhe in bowels of this house? This is Spooky's House of Jump Scares.

Ah!!!! a note!

As you dare to brave this journey, you recall the legends told of this dilapidated mansion upon the hill a blanket of darkness over the town. No real history has ever been recorded and even the oldest residents of this town can true really remember the beginnings of the mansion.

Hailing from Lag Studios our protagonist is a history nut you hearken up the mountain to the mansion, hoping to bring light to the history of this house of darkness.

Themed by horror, this first person player allows for free roaming around this manor of madness giving it a simplistic control in the standard W,A,S,D on the keyboard with SPACE bar to open door and skim through notes. Given the usual health and stamina bar on the top left of your screen. The right hand side is a room counter keeping track how many rooms you have been through. SPACE bar also is used for an axe you carry.

Heavens, its... a torch-lit hall.

The house seems to be almost random with the exception of a room intended storyline. Notes are scattered throughout the rooms, each one give a crucial part of the story.

For the first 50 some odd rooms the only real issue or threat is Specimen 1( a bright green ghost shaped like some sort of teardrop with a few tentacles) and it bounds through the walls in irregular intervals. The funniest part of this all is it is a cardboard cutout of a creature but appears in different forms such as: a blue spotted ghost, a skeleton with arm stretched out like a zombie, a purple, cloud-like creature, a brown cup filled with coffee, an ice cream cone and a distorted green creature with a bloody skull.

A Wolfenstein style game with corridors that seem endless with the same pixelated doors with these grey stone walls. Specimen 2 (a semi-solid humanoid with some bright green with a gel substance on its body, its face lacking lips and showing a row of sharpen teeth with no legs or feet with slime dripping off of it.

As the room continue on, the creatures get more disturbing. Between puzzles, guesses and armed only with an axe, you need to pay attention to all notes and hits the game offers, grab some scrap paper to jot a few notes. Just in case. Can the game be solved? Is there really an end to it?

Give it a chance and find out yourself.

Ghost girl manifested!

Free-to-Play Reappearance: Pinball Arcade

Hey folks welcome back for Day 3 of Free-to-Play and let's just jump right in. So a phenomenon that has happened around Steam is the love of pinball games. Farsight Studios created exact replicas of some of the all-time greatest pinball tables from Williams, Bally, Stern Pinball and Gottlieb all together in this one game. From every sound effect, bumper and flipper has so much detail and vibrant colors. This is Pinball Arcade.

Well those paddles are well placed.

A single-player, multiplayer game that is not only PC, Nintendo 3DS, Wii U and Playstation 4 mimicking famous pinball machines as far back as 1966. Stern Company associated with Sega brought Starship Troopers with movie quotes, sound effects, flashing lights and a 3D pinball with a sheen like a freshly made ball bearing. Ranging from over 5 seasons these titles are very familiar and have some history to them.

A few off-hand will age me but I care not. Taxi released by WMS Industries in 1988. The goal of the game is to pick up five passengers: Pinbot, Gorbie (a parody of General Secretary of Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev), Santa, Dracula and Lola (or Marilyn Monroe from the original release). Collecting all five passengers gives the jackpot. Amusingly enough there was some likeness rights over Marilyn Monroe, the character Marilyn had to be changed to Lola which looks identical to Marilyn made brunette.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was the first game to feature the auto-plunger (a trigger device vs a spring plunger) with Arnold Schwarzenegger gave voice to the game, showing the original dot matrix display or DMD (showing informations on machines, clocks, railway and plane depatures with a limited resolution) and frame and box-board artwork of the T-800 in Arnold form, damaged Arnold form and exoskeleton. A per-release had a finite release with Robert Patrick's T-1000 image to maybe 500 machines.

1979 Disney's The Black Hole with spring plunger.

From the early 60s woodrails (wood to frame the playfield glass) to showing of the EM Electron-mechanical (a pinball machines design with relays, motors and switches to run it) which was phased out of design in the late 1970s. After the 1970s pinball machines were referred as Solid State (a machine design that relies on computers and printed circuit boards to run it) are easily recognized by the scoring display powered by electricity vs the score reels that spin to display the scores.

So game play is easy enough with mouse left to right click for paddles, A and D to tilt. Pressing left or right mouse button to launch a ball. Aside from gorgeous graphics, sound effects supplied from the original standing units with 65 different arcade pinball and the DLC offers additional tables each month. Downside is you will have to pay for these new tables. Still love the intro music is an instrumental version of Pinball Wizard via The Who.

Mars needs women and blasters apparently.

Evil Dead Games: Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick

Hey babies welcome back for Day 3 of Evil Dead Games. Yeah even if you drink the juice, say the magic words and get cast through the vortex you never know what's going to happen. 3 years after Hail to the King, Ash is in his cups having whatever Midnight Hobo or Maker's Mark he can get his hands on when apparently on the local news in Dearborn that a colleague of the late Professor Knowby has translated the Necronomicon. Dare we say, problems a plenty? This is Evil Dead: Fistful of Boomstick.

Hey Slappy, go take a shower and get a meal. Gamers.

From the makers of Tom and Jerry in Fists of Fury and The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-traction via N64, VIS Entertainment teams up with THQ to bring Bruce Campbell back into the horrors of a deadite world in Dearborn Michigan. Local TV station KLA2 (or Klaatu for you folks that loved The Day the Earth Stood Still and Army of Darkness) Professor Eldridge converses and explains to news anchor Trisha Pettywood the "real truth" behind the Necronomicon as he is a parapsychologist and now best-selling author describing the Necronomicon has a large amount of history but to say it brings forth demons and opens portals is sensational hooey mocking Ash's claims. Ash continues to drown his sorrows in a watering hole and the bartender (voiced by Steve Blum) points out the loss of Ash's girlfriend Jenny who died in a bus accident. Yup, this guy never seems to get to keep the girl period. Somehow Trisha got hold of Knowby's tape recorder and plays the incantation summoning the evil back into the world through multiple portals.

A little boomstick action later, Ash realizes he has to strap on his big boy boots, grab some weapons and stop the evil YET AGAIN and save the world...all for his minimum pay at S-Mart. 

Bleh, ass ahoy.

This game while gory, is more of an action theme hack and slash rather than the typical horror survival of the previous game and is still single-player. The controls are easier on the to roll with and was released for the Xbox and PlayStation 2.

With a three swipe chainsaw manuever you can spray the streets with the blood of the deadites and boomstick action is pretty feasible and yes I do like the over the shoulder blasting but overall the mechanics of the combats are too simplistic, the boss fights require a bit of strategy but not that challenging. Unlike Hail to the King, ammo is plentiful as is gas for the saw but that does make a bit of sense given you are in town rather than a remote location like the cabin and the surrounding areas.  

The respawn of the deadites is not as often as it was with Hail to the King but even that game didn't feel like they were as constant as many reviews would like you to believe. You find a spellbook that gives you are a fair degree of variety. Apparently you absorb the power, chi or energy of fallen baddies to power each spell with ranges from lightning, stunning large groups of enemies, increasing your strength to that of ten men and temporary possession of a deadite to use against their fellow rotting comrades. The spells do work better for solving puzzles rather than open combat.

The musical score by Stewart Clark is impressive, Bruce chucks out a few one-liners but the waiting or prodding one-liners were the better of the lot. The voice talents of names that I immediately recognized were Phil LaMarr, Rob Paulsen, Tom Kenny, Billy West, William Hootkins as the Professor and Debi Mae West as Trisha.

Overall, gameplay is fair but the levels seem way too easy and the story a bit short but if you are looking to lop arms, legs and heads off or just want a prime example of an action game than you are in luck.

Ew, squirted like a ketchup packet!

Evil Dead Games: Evil Dead: Hail to the King

Welcome back for Day 2 of Evil Dead Games and I am not gonna lie to you but that previous Commodore 64 game was frightfully dull after about 10 minutes. This next chapter in the video game foray however is complex, easily hung up on corners, boxes and even chairs. The pixelation is a bit rough on the eyes and the levels are difficult but I think we have a more entertaining round of boomstick and chainsaw fun. This is Evil Dead: Hail to the King

Ax MURDDEEEEEERRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

Developed by Heavy Iron Studios (Evil Dead: Hail to the King, Scooby-Doo! Night of 100 Frights, The Incredibles, WALL-E, Up and UFC Personal Trainer) and produced by THQ (Peter Pan and the Pirates, Red Faction, Red Faction: Armageddon, Company of Heroes 2 and Metro: Last Light) recounts 3 years after Army of Darkness' theatrical ending in that Ash swallowed the juice, said the magic words and ended up back in his own time to Dearborn Michigan. He is back to working retail at S-Mart and even lucks out meeting a girl from Housewares, Jenny. Racked with guilt and nightmares the two of them come to the conclusion that Ash simply needs to face his fears and go back to the cabin where it all started...cause that sounds sane. No sooner they are there that Ash's former hand plays Professor Knowby's recorder unleashing the evil back into the world, an unseen entity scoops up Jenny and Bad Ash from the mirror is off to do horrible things.

It's a fixer upper kinda house.

Ash of course is apprised in voice by Bruce Campbell. With pre-rendered backgrounds and those damn semi-fixed camera angles you feel a certain Resident Evil vibe, along with limited ammo for the boomstick as well as limited gas for your chainsaw. Standard d-pad or analog stick left and right to rotate the character then move the character back and forward for the d-pad up and down.

There are puzzles to be solved, deadites to slay and Hellbillies to contend with. Along with the usual bag of nasty to deal with, you also need healing packs from attacks, watch your ammo, health and gas reserves. With the typical tank motion movement, you have a few special attacks with the chainsaw and boomstick, there are other weapons to be found and improved on. A double-headed ax, Knowby's .45, rock salt for the boomstick, steel spikes for the .45 and a Winchester .30-30 modified with spikes as well do to more damaged to these dead punks and like Resident Evil a converter to make more healing and useful items.

The enemies are a bit out there. We have an assortment of what the hell with standard deadites, raised skeleton warriors, the undead hillbillies are called Hellbillies and a troop of boy scouts known as the Wolverine Scouts. So yes lots of Michigan references as well as Tennesee references. As time travel via portal in Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness, there are a few gags there as well. This is not insanely hard if you are a Resident Evil fan and understand how much time you have between respawns. Yeah it is a bit rough and the save features are identical but Ash gets 8 item slots so suck it Chris Redfield, with your crappy six.

Made for Dreamcast, Playstation and PC this is a dark horror survival first player game that has limited saves, fast paced in some areas while it lulls you into a false security and them boom...possessed boars coming at ya! Yup, bad piggies! Will Ash save the girl and the world?? Is he doomed to be the "Chosen One"? Will he speak the exact words??

HE WHO FALLS FROM THE SKY!!!

Evil Dead Games: The Evil Dead for Commodore 64

Welcome followers of sugar and the boomstick to Day 1 of Evil Dead Games. I had to do quite a bit of digging for our first game in question. From the British video game publisher and developers of 8-bit joy that is Palace Software (Cauldron, Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back, The Sacred Armour of Antiriad, Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior and Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax) comes a game that was linked to the UK's 8-bit personal computer known as the ZX Spectrum as well as the Commodore 64. This is The Evil Dead Commodore 64.

Terrifying graphics of doom!!!

Now there are many young readers that have no clue what these antiquated computer systems are. Well shush youngsters, and you may learn something. Commodore 64 was created in January 1932 by Commodore International which outsold the IBM PC and Apple at the time. That 64 stands for 64 kb of RAM and 20 kb of ROM and required 5.1 Floppy drives, dot matrix printers and a CIA 6526 joystick (2 of them usually came with) and it sold over 17 million units. Palace Software is the first officially-licensed publisher to tackle today's game in question and being it is based on then deemed a "Video Nasty" it became known as a "Computer Nasty" and did not have that wide a release in the states.

The game of course is low res 8-bit in the cabin for The Evil Dead took place in the film. You, the player get everyone's loveable, cheeseball goof Ash. Ash must close the cabin windows up in order to prevent monsters from entering the cabin. Yup, a bookcase against shutters keeps evil at bay. Who knew? You are also required to gank the monsters already in the cabin. As you defeat the monsters, there are a variety of weapons (shovels, shotguns and axes) to dispatch some accursed Evil Dead. As Ash's energy levels start to wain he can pick up new weapons in order to increase his energy in order to slap the baddies about. Ash has to get his mitts on The Book of the Dead and destroy it in order to send the evil back from hence it came from.

Must...get...shovel.

The controls are a bit jerky, this is a single-player adventure-survival horror game that honestly felt like you were slaying the monsters or just shooing them out of the cabin. The window shutters pop open over and over and over again. There are dangerous poisonous clouds??? It simply looked like dirt-infused gusts of wind but hey I didn't write or program the game. The emulator was easy enough to download as many of the few existing copies for the Commodore 64 are very scarse.

I hate to say this but this was fun for about 5 minutes and you know I love me some old school games but the repetition is daunting. The intro sounds like a cross between Castlevania and Legend of Zelda as you get this weird text scroll crawl across your screen telling you the being of the story... in case you missed the movie. Thankfully the tinny music does not continue when you start playing but it has all the hallmarks of the boops and bleeps of the day. Better luck next game I hope but again for its day it is a piece of cinema history.

Also keep in mind this is one of the few 8-bit games that was horror related like the Atari 2600 Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now why don't those games get a reboot love huh?

Let's see what tomorrow has in store for me when we tackle the Playstation game Evil Dead: Hail to the King.

Guess he didn't like the porch swing anymore.

Ghosts of N64 Week: Spider-Man 64

Welcome, welcome welcome my console comrades to Day 5 of Ghosts of N64 Week.  As I should have mentioned in my last blog, a family emergency needed met and all is well now.  I was a bit scragged due to crappy sleep prior to do a blog for yesterday.  But enough of that!  We need to observe this N64 game that swept the nation...  to playing it on Playstation instead.  Seriously though, the Playstation version and Game Boy Color got better love than the N64 but what can you do?  So let's catch up with Stan Lee's intro and bring about our favorite wall-crawling, web-spinning, sensational, spectacular Spider-Man.  This is Spider-Man 64.

Hah, take that, Daredevil!

This game brings about the visual representations of the characters as they were portrayed in the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon but with a story-line more closely to the comics.  Using a few voice clips from the cartoon, drawn animations for cut scenes and the voice cast of the cartoon, our game begins with Peter Parker taking pictures for the Daily Bugle as Doctor Octavious (Doctor Octopus) has reformed and is prepping a demonstration of his new scientific wonder under a tarp when Spider-Man swoops down and steals this priceless trinket.  "But Jake, how can Spider-Man do that, if Peter Parker is still in the crowd?  Clone?  Rogue Robot?"   Well, good questions all around as Venom assumes the impostor is the real deal and chases after him when Spidey impostor break his camera...  cause the Bugle just keeps an insane wacko like that on staff.

A city-wide manhunt is conducted by NYPD for Spidey's head and the stolen tech.  I swear this guy never truly gets a break.  Spidey, with the help of a few allies, has to find the device, prove Doc Ock is still a schmuck and clear his name once again.  Heh, Jonah is gonna love that detraction from the papers.  Heck, he should be used to it by now.

Hmm?  Sorry, I was gawking at your breasts. You were saying..?

Just a few points on the game now.   With training modes of time attack (drop the baddies in such a span of time), speed training, item collection (for power ups and power improvements) and of course a cheat menu for different costumes and powers, this single-player beat 'em up action platform is based in time trials, puzzle solving and tough baddies looking to put the hurt on the web-slinger.

With 30 levels of quick thinking, tactical approaches or just leaping in and smacking lackeys around, coupled with boss levels it is easily understood you want the Controller memory card Pak or you may lose your game easily. You may want food, a social life and sleep so saving the game in this fashion is while frowned upon but the hard core gamers, hey I understand the need for all the above.

An unusual pairing of anti-heroes such as: The Punisher and Venom in the game as well as heroes the like of: Captain America, The Human Torch of the Fantastic Four and cat burglar turned adventurer Black Cat throughout the game assist Spidey in one facet or another but never directly fighting side by side with him.  Missed an excellent two-player option there.  Using the same game-engine as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, the easter egg in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, was an option to shred your deck dressed as Spider-Man.  Level restarts are pretty common given the finite amount of web fluid, the failure to save a hostage, health bar running out or my personal favorite, falling to your death.

With power-ups such as Spider-Armor (increased strength and defense) and different webbing creations, Fire Webbing was the coolest and most effective against the symbiotes, the baddie AIs are pretty limited and have no tactical advantages like hiding, using cover or sneaking about.  The gunsels are pretty slow on the trigger and are easily pummeled Spidey style. The details in the graphics give a decent 3D effect of buildings, surroundings and vehicles, heck even the people have decent detail for the day.  Spidey cuts a mean and lean figure as he punches the lights out of his rogue gallery.

Spandex wedgie! Ow, ow ow.

One other amusing concept which PC and Consoles have kinda done to death now because of this game is the alternative costumes.  Each level completed has the chance of a new costume with different abilities with the looks of the black and white symbiote, Spider-Man Unlimited nano-tech suiit, Parker street clothes, Spider-Man 2099, the Scarlet Spider (Parker's clone) the Clone Ben Reilly's Spider-Man costume and the cosmic power Captain Universe costume.  Yeah, the web head has had his share of goofy threads and adventures but all in all the game is still enjoyable to the day and has some great memories attached to it

PC Games of 1997: Diablo

Welcome back boys and girls for Day 5 of PC Games of 1997 and I had to save the greatest time waster of them all.  The penultimate of dates broken, ladies unloved and meals missed.  From a company’s humble beginnings as Silicon & Synapse (sounds like a firm specializing in breast and brain augmentation)the years of Battle Chess and Castles  to the company we better known as Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.  Creators of such games as: Warcraft, Warcraft II, Starcraft, The Death and Return of Superman and Justice League Task Force came a hack and slash adventure game to the likes we had not seen with graphics and excellent voice work.  So grab your mana and health bottles, sharpen your broadsword and prepare to do battle with those denizens of Hell.   This is Diablo.

 

Um... there is a plot device scrolling over our heads.

Uldyssian: Damn you!

Lucion: Thank you, I already am. Shall we go spoil?

In the world of Sanctuary, beneath the town of Tristam lurks Diablo, the Lord of Terror. Eons ago the war between Heaven and Hell raged on. Angels and demons slew one another by the hundreds until the demons were exiled to the mortal realm.  Three terrible Lords of Hell sought victory over mankind through temptation and influencing their decisions, sowing the seeds of distrust and hatred amongst the humans of Sanctuary until a gathering of mages trapped the lords in soulstones.  Diablo’s soulstone was buried deep under the ground in the land that would be known as Tristam a large monastery built over the wretched soulstone to guard and keep the stone from ever seeing light.

Screw doing good.  I'm gonna loot!!

Many generations later the monastery sat in ruin and Tristam was raised up over the ruins and the monastery was leveled for a cathedral.   It would have been nice of the ancestors to leave any notes, scrolls or etchings on the importance of the monastery.   Slowly Diablo gains power over the town and proceeds to warp the good king Leoric and creates terrible wars all the while filling the caverns and catacombs underneath the former monastery with horrible, formidable creates to guard Diablo while he regains his power.

With no king, law or even an army to defend this once happy and prosperous town many of the villagers up and left this township of terror. 

The standard classes of adventurers are pretty limited to Rogue, Warrior and Sorcerer.  Each powerful in their own right but require improvement throughout the leveling.   All items give off a certain color scheme glow to establish how they can be used and by whom.  The colors are white for the normal items, blue for the magic items and gold for the unique items.   They also show how durable each item is and how they can all wear down from too much use and the weapons show all the pros and cons of each melee, blunt and range weapon.  

While this RPG hack and slash is primarily a single-player game it was set up for a LAN (local area network) Multi-player of up to a whopping 4 players and had its drawbacks.  For example: Kill parties laying in wait for that poor noob that greets fellow players so they may kill him/her and strip the body of its belongings.   Also the Cheat Engine (a game editing program) was commonly used to overamp one’s character to make him/her an impossible level and have a wide array of weapons for the sole purpose of killing off fellow gamers, I.E. game killer or jerk off.

While slaying the undead, various monsters and demons is a boon and the story was sound I am certain many friends and families were worried to the gamer that was camped at his/her computer for hours at a time but then again it was not EverQuest (The Silent Killer).

Ahh glad I went without breeches in Hell.