TERMINAL VELOCITY: BOOSTED EDITION
SHORT VERSION: Once upon a time this was a technically very impressive and cool game, but the core gameplay is so shallow and repetitive that eventually you’ll end up just skipping as much of it as possible. More like Terminal HURLocity!!!
LONG VERSION: Let’s get the important thing out of the way: this game’s soundtrack absolutely slaps.
Okay, now onto the game itself.
This is an arcadey sci-fi flight sim where you fly across the surfaces of planets and shoot at things while also getting shot at.
I remember when I first played this and being blown away by it… the planets felt so huge and detailed with rolling hills, they all looked different, all the enemies were 3D, there are lasers and ships flying all over the place, it felt so cinematic when enemies screamed by you or spun down into the ground when hit, and that first time I flew above the clouds… whoooaaa. And I still get some of that feeling today! It still looks and feels really cool… but it’s also more of a tech demo than a game, really.
All but the final planet have three stages each, with a boss waiting in the third. There are a handful of different objectives to accomplish while on a level… follow the radar to a checkpoint, follow the radar to targets to destroy, follow the radar to the exit pad, or follow the radar to a tunnel. You use the radar a lot here! It’s especially useful keeping track of enemies flying around you.
I mentioned tunnels, and I used to think these were sooooo cool. Basically, sometimes you’ll see holes in the ground which will turn the game into a tunnel running sequence. These moments are a bit silly really, with doors that open and close and enemies just hanging out in there, it’s all very contrived, but I thought they were fun and I still think they are. Sometimes the tunnels will lead to a big room under the planet, which makes me wonder if these moments inspired Descent.
Tunnels also act as the game’s secrets pretty much, since not all are mandatory and you get a percentage bonus for how many you find at the end of a level. It can be annoying though, sometimes you’ll find the butthole of a tunnel and can’t go inside it, and then you spend ages trying to find the entrance. Aside from tunnels, you can also just fly around and find non-mandatory areas that have a bunch of item caches for you to pilfer.
So, they try to make the game feel varied with the different objectives and tunnels… buuuttt this game feels pretty samey pretty quickly. Each planet has it’s own aesthetic and even enemies, but most of the enemies just feel like reskins. They try to make the planet designs feel different too… some are quite flat and open (including a cool ocean planet with islands popped around it), some are valleys or trenches (yes they do a Star Wars trench thing), some have lots of mountains/volcanoes… buuttt this doesn’t matter much if the core of the gameplay feels the same, and it does.
All the objectives basically boil down to “follow the radar here and either do nothing or something,” but the biggest problem is the combat… it’s way too simple. Enemies on the ground will just slowly shoot closer and closer towards you, so as long as you don’t shoot them straight on for too long, you’ll be fine (which is also the strategy that works for 90% of the bosses). It gets old fast, and just gets more annoying as levels become populated with more enemies.
Enemies in the air aren’t much better. They have very simple AI, and you can see how it works if you watch them for a bit and observe how rigged their movement through the air is, reacting to your position. It’s very easy to manipulate them and, like the ground targets, they just become more annoying later on as they become more frequent, like swarms of flies. At least they always go down easy.
So, this stuff leads to the REAL problem with the game… eventually you’ll get sick of engaging with the enemies because they’re just boring and more of a nuisance instead of fun to fight. You’ll end up just afterburning to the next area you need to go to, take out the targets you need to and ignore all the other enemies who won’t hassle you too much if you keep moving, and then move onto the next target. I mean, you might stop off to raid supply caches you fly over, but that’s about it.
And you know a game has a serious problem when you’d rather avoid engaging with the actual gameplay.
I mean, it’s still fun in a “turn your brain off” kinda way, but yeah, it’s extremely shallow and repetitive.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention… though most of the bosses are boring as hell to fight, the designs are usually pretty cool! And the final boss is so stupid, it made me laugh.
This remaster, at least the Switch version, is also rather janky. While the transition from surface to tunnels is now seamless (if you ignore the music restarting), tunnels can sometimes look glitchy as you approach them. A more annoying error is it constantly telling me all ground targets are destroyed when it very much isn’t the case.
Otherwise, this remaster looks and plays great… but it is severely lacking options, not letting you adjust the game to your liking as in Nightdive remasters.
It also breaks the game somewhat… the draw distance is now huge (and it looks so cool!), whereas there was a fairly close fog in the original game. The problem is that you can now see enemies just standing in place, waiting to be triggered by you being close enough. It makes the game feel janky, and also makes it easier since you can just pick off enemies from the distance now. The enemies tended to do that to you in the original game… the radar was much more useful there.
And no, you can’t turn the draw distance back to its original amount. As I said, there are very few options here and frankly it feels pretty low effort for a commercial re-release… I’ve seen plenty of fan projects that do a better job.
So yeah! It’s a mediocre remaster of a mediocre game. It’s fun for a few levels, but you’ll get bored of it well before the end.
Really, it mostly wanted me to play Descent again… I don’t think that has gotten a remaster yet which is surprising. I wonder if that holds up at all… I know the Mac soundtrack does, that’s for sure!
ASTERIX AND OBELIX TAKE ON CAESAR
SHORT VERSION: A collection of extremely primitive minigames that drag on for way too long, and they somehow feel janky and confusing despite how simple they are. It’s supposed to be Asterix & Obelix, not Game & Watch!
LONG VERSION: The textures and 3D models for this game are pretty good for a PS1… and that’s the only good thing I have to say about this game based on one of the Asterix live action movies!
You can play as either Asterix of Obelix, but it’s basically the same except where Asterix would get magic potion, Obelix will get a kiss or something to fire him up.
Looking at screenshots, you may think this is some kind of 2.5D platformer like Pandemonium, but NO, it’s a collection of minigames. Terrible, awful minigames.
They’re basically all janky Game & Watch recreations. All but the last level are variations of the G&W game Ball, except not as good. For example, you can’t see everything on screen at once, which is an important thing for G&W style games. The controls also feel really clunky and unresponsive despite being so simple.
Most levels are just collecting things falling from above, but the final level finally lets you beat people up as these characters famously known for beating people up, but once again the gameplay is so incredibly simple and dull.
And despite being so simple, there are still things that take a while to understand because rules aren’t explained well enough! That’s right, they add extra rules to try and make things more complex, but they just make things more tedious and confusing. Like, when Obelix is called over for a kiss, the kiss doesn’t always happen? Why not? Was I too slow? Do I have to do something extra? Is it just broken? It’s probably just broken.
Also, since there are only like 7 minigames in here, they all go on for SOOOO LOONNGGGG. Like, the first level needs you to slap away 75 out of 90 fish! And they’re all like this!! It sucks!!!
ASTERIX DESERVES BETTER THAN THIS. AND ALSO OBELIX.
At least the movie was entertaining, though it’s not a patch on the old cartoons imo.
THE WHEEL OF TIME
SHORT VERSION: A janky, buggy fantasy FPS that is objectively not good, but for people who enjoy jank, there are enough interesting ideas here to make it worth checking out, even if isn’t a WHEELY good time. Plus, it’s short!
LONG VERSION: Based on a series of books that has about 20 million entries, at its core Wheel of Time is a fantasy-themed FPS using the Unreal engine, but it also has quite a few interesting ideas.
You get your powers through… objects with a weird fantasy name, so I’ll just call them spells. Spells can be found all over the place, like guns and ammo in a standard FPS. The initial basic spells basically act as guns, but eventually you get more interesting ones…
On the offensive side, you got ones that home in on enemies, ones that will slowly drain the health of the target, ones that will freeze enemies in ice, one that will make the earth erupt underneath enemies, ones that basically act as mines, and even one that traps the target in a twister, and then you can drag them around with your cursor.
You also get some defensive spells such as a variety of shields that protect you from different elements, one that reflects spells back at enemies, one that will dispel any negative effects on you, one that will stop other people from casting for a short while, there’s a standard healing one, and so on.
Then we get into some of the more unique ones, like one that makes a doppelganger of yourself, one that lets you swap places with an enemy, one that lets you levitate (though really it just slows your fall), and one that lets you warp through doors.
All these powers give you some tactics to use in combat, though with non-magical enemies you only need the basics… there are some complications such as enemies with that annoying Unreal Skaarj “AI” where they hop out of the way whenever you shoot at them, some knights have shields that will reflect spells, and most enemies have WAY TOO MUCH HEALTH (thankfully you don’t encounter hordes, and in general there isn’t a huge amount of enemies in the game), but basic FPS stuff will get you past them.
Some people complain that levels feel empty due to the small amount of enemies, but I felt it added to the atmosphere.
Anyway, it’s magical enemies you really gotta use tactics on! For example, freeze an enemy in place, case a earthquake spell, and then as that enemy melts, use a twister spell to hold them in place over the earthquake. An enemy keeps launching attacks at you? Reflect them back and while the spells moving towards them, make it so the enemy can’t use a shield!
These enemies become more frequent towards the end of the game, but by that time you basically have a magical nuke that helps it from becoming overwhelming.
But also boy howdy, you’ll be dying a lot and using the hell out of that quick save. For one, enemies have high hit points as mentioned, and you’re rather weak yourself. The action also moves SUPER FAST, and some of the spells can feel pretty clunky to use, plus actually selecting the spell you want is an ordeal since you end up with a massive arsenal you have to sort through to find the right one.
It doesn’t help that the game feels very janky (and often buggy), though you can also take advantage of it… you can often find ways to cheese enemies because their AI craps out or just doesn’t trigger at all, or you can find a spot where they can’t easily get to you and they can’t figure out what to do.
Anyway, let’s talk about the level design for a bit!
There were some moments that reminded me of Thief, with a bit of a horror fantasy thing going on. The first instance were a collection of levels early in the game set in some ruins, with a moody atmosphere and monsters that you often only see the red eyes of at first in shadows before they lunge at you. There are also sentient clouds of gas that slowly chase/sneak after you, and there is some kind of giant pig monster thing. I should note these levels are pretty rough since you only have basic, weak spells here and the monsters can tear you to shreds pretty easily.
The other instance was this really interesting part where you had to use some kind of dark dimension to catch up with the villains in the game, but there is some force chasing after you that looks like a storm of tormented souls… in order to survive, you gotta jump to other dimensions and use them as “safe houses” as the storm dissipates in your absence. It was pretty cool, and I’m going to guess it’s something taken from the books.
OH, another level that reminded me of thief was one where there are no enemies (aside from a boss), and instead you have to navigate through a bunch of tricks and traps. This also felt the most puzzly level in the game, and it’s pretty brutal with lots of quick deaths if you don’t pay attention. They DO give you lots of detect trap spells, but the traps are still hard to navigate around, especially due to the jankiness of the game! Oh, they also introduce a spell here that shows you where to go next, as this one is a bit easy to get lost in.
The final level was also pretty interesting, because it’s basically a hub where you have to jump between different dimensions to recover a “seal” in each.
There was another level where you have to defend against a wave of enemies, but I’ll talk more about that one later for reasons…
ANYWAY as you can see there are a few interesting highlights, BUT for the most part you’re running around castle halls of some variety, with some excursions outside. Most of the levels are also quite linear, including the outdoor ones which are mostly valleys.
This means there isn’t that much exploration, and instead combat is broken up by bits where you have to use spells to move forward. Most of the time it’s pretty unimaginative… . Oh, this bridge is out? Use the levitation spell you found nearby! Oh, this room is full of fire? Use the fire protection spell you found nearby! Oh, this bridge is gusty? Use the wind protection spell you found nearby!
As you can see, the puzzles in this game are pretty simple, but they at least add a small sense of adventure and variety to the game. I think the most interesting one was when I was trapped outside a fortress, but hitting a gong over a wall calls a guard outside, who you can then use the “swap positions” power with to warp into the fortress. The game will also make powers needed to solve puzzles respawn so you don’t get softlocked that way (but you can get softlocked OTHER ways due to the game’s bugginess). This also makes it obvious what the solution to the puzzle is, not that it wasn’t obvious already.
Due to so many levels being fairly linear and corridor heavy, there isn’t much room for emergent gameplay outside of combat despite all the variety of spells you have. There were a few moments where I got to experiment… for example, on the very last level there was a wizard I was having a lot of trouble with, so I lured them to a window, jumped to a ledge, and swapped places with him… that got him out of my hair and I was quite proud of that solution.
I tried doing sequence breaks and stuff with things like levitate, but it never really resulted in anything (or I’d accidentally get softlocked or find the end of the world). Naturally, you only get the power that lets you warp through doors at very specific places so you can only use it in scripted places.
But yeah, it’s too bad the level design doesn’t let you have fun with emergent stuff… I mean, Deus Ex was Unreal too, so it was possible! But imagine a fantasy imsim game where you can use different powers in open environments… wait, I just described Dishonoured. Dishonoured is basically the good version of this!
I should talk about the story a bit… it’s a very generic fantasy story, and the cutscenes have WAY TOO MUCH TALKING and are hard to follow because they’re full of words that make no sense if you’re not familiar with the books. Also, apparently this takes place 150 years before the first book and isn’t considered canonical despite getting some kind of input from the author.
Now, let’s talk about multiplayer! There is standard deathmatch which I imagine was extremely chaotic, not to mention unbalanced. But what sounded really interesting is the Citadel mode.
This is basically Capture the Flag, where each team has their own citadel to guard… but what makes it interesting is that players can set up traps, barriers, and even NPC guards in their own citadel, Tecmo’s Deception style! It seems so interesting.
Unfortunately, no one plays this game anymore, but I did get to experience it in the tutorial which lets you have a play around with the concept against some computer enemies. But… why wasn’t this in the single-player game?
As mentioned, there is a level where you defend against waves of baddies, but you just use your standard spells (mostly mines), gates to control the flow, and one giant trap built in the level. This one would have been perfect for the Citadel gameplay!! (As an aside, this was also the buggiest level in the game… sometimes the waves just wouldn’t spawn and softlock me. I think quick saving caused this, and using normal saves seemed to solve the problem).
It really feels like they WANTED to do it here, but ran out of time. In fact, the whole game feels rushed what with it being so janky. The story also wraps up really quickly with a note you find towards the end, and the final confrontation against the big bad (a guy with the worst facial hair in videogame history) is a cutscene instead of an actual level. The game is also quite short, being around 5-6 hours long (not that I mind that).
OH YEAH, I love the neo-folk soundtrack this game has.
So yeah, this is a fantasy FPS that’s short, janky, has an incomprehensible plot, and can be a really rough game to play due to the tough combat… basically, I don’t think this is a good game. But I’m glad I played through it! It has enough interesting ideas to make it worthwhile if you don’t mind (or enjoy) 2000s jank. Could it do with more polish and be a better game? Definitely… but yes, most people won’t get much out of this game (including fans of the books), but for us jank FPS fans, this is worth a look.
FORTNITE
SHORT VERSION: Not gonna lie, I loved this game for some time because at the core is a really good game! But I hated the Live Service manipulation tactics, the way everything is timed and controlled by Epic, and it had too media partnerships I couldn’t support morally. Sorry, but it’s time to say goodnight to Fortnite!
LONG VERSION: I remember attending a talk at GDC by the original Fortnite team when this was still in development, and they seemed absolutely unexcited about their own game, like they expected no one to care about it. And they were right! No one cares about the original Save the World mode, and it wasn’t until they threw in the Battle Royale formula ripped off from other games that people actually took notice.
It took me ages to try the game for myself, and I bounced off at first because I thought the building felt incredibly clunky and unsatisfying, plus I wasn’t a fan of crafting and resource gathering in a game of this nature.
Then someone told me about Zero Build, and yes, this is the best way to play the game, without the mechanic that majorly sets it apart from all the other Battle Royale games lol.
And you know what… this game is really good! Like, it just feels really good to play. Running and sliding around feels good, the shooting feels good, driving feels good, the cartoon aesthetic makes everything easy to parse for someone like me with vision impairment (plus I just prefer the goofiness to dry visuals of say, Player Unknown), the Royale mechanics like the storm shrinking and such feel well balanced and smart, the maps are fun to explore and offer plenty of tactical options… it’s just a really fun, great feeling game! Of course, the Royale stuff probably felt well designed because they just copied what other games had been refining for quite some time.
But I had to give it up for a number of reasons.
First, it took way too long find a new match when you died.
Second, I didn’t like how the seasons compelled me to play… instead of just playing when I felt like playing, I often would jump in just so I could earn points and unlock all the stuff for the season. FOMO over stuff that didn’t matter. And I don’t like the seasons are designed to make it feel like you won’t manage to unlock everything if you don’t compulsively play.
Too many times, after unlocking everything, I suddenly would lose the will to play any more… because I had already exhausted myself by playing just to unlock stuff, not because I actually truly wanted to. It was a bad habit and I had to ditch it.
Then there is the fact that some seasons are just way more fun and interesting than others. Basically, whenever they got more weird and experimental with it. And if you really liked a season, too bad, you won’t ever be able to play it again unless they say so.
Plus charging for skins and shit, leading to kids getting bullied.
This is pretty much just Live Service stuff in general I’m complaining about so far, and yes I hate Live Service stuff in general, so I’ll try to focus on more Fortnite geared stuff.
All the media crossover. Now, I can’t lie, I did get a kick out of some of this stuff… often they would be underwhelming, but they knocked it out of the park sometimes like with The Simpsons, which ended up being technically one of the best Simpsons games ever released (not that the bar is high).
And standing on top of a mountain and making Peter Griffon go Super Saiyan after winning a Royale? What can I say, it amused me.
But in the end, it’s all just advertising, and is contributing to media being nothing but a collection of franchises owned by a tiny amount of huge corporations. Plus, back in my day, it was the fans who made skins and mods for Quake 3 and what not, allowing them to have more creative freedom and not beholden to rights owners. Of course, they’d just get cease and desisted these days.
All these promotions also restrict the Fortnite devs! The most interesting seasons have been the ones where they didn’t have to do some kind of promotion, letting them experiment with different mechanics like hoverboards or grinding. Yes, they took heavy inspiration from other sources often, but at least they had the freedom to put their own spin on it instead of appeasing corporate overlords.
Then there are the ethics… there have been too many partnerships that I just believe to be unethical. Like the cybertruck for a start, but then Harry Potter as well? That was what ensured I’ll never came back to this. Plus Tim Sweeney is a fuckwit and I don’t want to support Epic.
SO YEAH, fun game, but I have too many issues with it to go back to it.
AIR TWISTER
SHORT VERSION: It ain’t no Space Harrier, but this surreal rail shooter with a wonderfully cheesy Queen-ish soundtrack can still be enjoyed for what it is, despite taking too long to become challenging, and having annoying traits from its mobile origins that thankfully didn’t leave me feeling too… TWISTED.
LONG VERSION:
I initially bounced off this in DISGUST, but decided since I spent (a tiny amount of) money on it, I may as well give it more of a chance. And I’m glad I did! I mean, I still don’t think it’s great, but I had a good time with it in the end.
Part of the reason I was so disappointed is because I’m a huge Space Harrier fan. I was in the front row to see Suzuki do a talk at GDC years ago, and when he brought up Harrier my friend and I cheered and he laughed at us (in what we think was a positive way). But as much as this may look like a modern Space Harrier, it ain’t!
It sure looks the same, with both being rail shooters. But Air Twister is much more focused on waves of enemies than Harrier, with very little obstacle dodging (though you’ll find bullets heading towards you much more often). You also don’t just slam the shoot button this time (though there is definitely a lot of that still) since you can lock-on enemies ala Panzer Dragoon.
So, it’s much more focused on learning the waves and being efficient with the lock-ons while dodging enemy fire, and picking off stragglers with your bullets, with points being awarded at the end of the level for taking out waves (and also for taking out the boss fast, and for not getting hit).
The aesthetic also feels similar, with some kind of sci-fi person flying through mostly fantasy worlds, though Harrier felt weirder with it’s oddball combinations of bizarre enemies that look like they all came from different dimensions… Air Twister is much more consistent, with every environment and enemy looking like they’re from the cover of a 70s prog rock album.
Oh yeah, that brings me to the music! It’s all done by some Queen soundalike, and I enjoyed how wonderfully cheesy it was.
OH, and this is more “cinematic” than Space Harrier, with the camera following a path that goes all up and around, rather than just along the ground. That’s the power of modern technology, baybeeee
OKAY, so far it sounds not bad, but now we’re going to get into why I bounced off the game so hard.
First, my biggest problem… this game takes way too long to get challenging! Like, it wasn’t until the last quarter (so 3 or 4 levels towards the end) where I started to actually feel challenged. Space Harrier kicks you in the crotch right from the start… while I understand them not wanting them to do that here, WAY too much of the game is a cake walk.
It also feels so frictionless for about the same amount of time… you’re flying through these levels so slow, and the enemy waves take forever to appear, and there lacks oomph to the sounds and explosions (something that remains the same through the whole game, but once the pace picks up it’s harder to notice).
Then comes my second biggest problem… this started as a mobile game, and has all that mobile game bullshit attached to it, i.e. playing over and over to earn an in-game currency to unlock extra crap.
Half of it is cosmetic crap that I don’t care about, but it also lets you unlock things like slo-mo powers, being able to lock-on more enemies at once, and different weapons.
Which annoys me, because arcade games should be designed around specific mechanics, dang it!! How many lock-ons was this designed around? Which weapon was it really designed for?? Did they build this with slo-mo in mind??? It drives me nuts. Also all this stuff makes the game easier when I want it to be harder!! I mean, it’s good for people who struggle with the game, but what about ME.
Worst of all, stuff I care about is locked behind this progress tree, too… there is a turbo mode I’d love to try, but I have to unlock! Just let me play it now! I don’t want to keep playing the slow version!
There are also some really weird extra modes, like one where you just tap on numbers in sequence? Not sure what’s going on there, maybe it was a game someone on the team made for mobiles years ago and decided to include it in here.
Luckily there is also an arcade mode, which I THINK is unlocked at the start, or at least is unlocked early. This has multiple difficulties, but it just changes how much health you have instead of making things harder in an actual meaningful way.
Anyway, playing arcade mode on normal seems like the best way to experience this game if you’re a Harrier fan… it’s still slow to start, but it gives you a set amount of lock-ons and no special weapons or powers. Feels the most pure, and while I’m still not sure what mechanics the game was actually built around, the ones used here seem to work well.
I ended up playing through the arcade mode a few times and had fun with the game! It certainly has charm and imagination, and eventually challenge. It’s still not what I want it to be, but lots of other people in backloggd seem to really enjoy this game… maybe Harrier is too old fashioned for them, and Air Twister is more enjoyable. And I’m glad this is a game for them, even if it’s not one for me!
SPLATOON
Played the hell out of this for a while back in the Wii U days. A fresh concept executed really well.
Using the second pad to see the map and instantly warp where you need to with a tap really made the game for me, I used it to spot places that needed to be painted but weren’t heavily defended.
Of course, this means I never bothered with the sequels since they lacked the dual screen function and lost a lot of appeal to me. Also eventually grew tired of the game due to not having enough maps and such, but it was a blast while it lasted. The Splatfest or whatever events were fun but not enough to keep me coming back.
Oh, I also even enjoyed the solo levels, as simple as they were. Felt like playing an early 3D PS1 game in their design which I found very appealing. Makes me wonder if I should check out that solo spinoff that just came out.
Maybe when it’s on like 90% discount.
