I re-listened to Joe Satriani’s “Engines of Creation” album from just after the turn of the millennium… and while I love his guitar work, it basically sounded like Sonic the Hedgehog background music. Nonetheless, a great album using probably the most elements of electronica of any Satriani album.
Tag Archives: video games
Finally Beat “Abzu” on PS4
It didn’t take long to beat Abzu out of difficulty, but rather losing interest for quite a while. The visuals are beautiful, and it’s a fun experience, but there’s basically zero difficulty and no way to lose.
Overall I’d say it’s a mediocre game, and far less interesting than “Journey”, made by the same developer. And while I’d like to play Journey again, I don’t think I’ll be playing Abzu a second time.
Nonetheless, having found a deal on the PlayStation store to buy it for $5, I’d say it was well worth the money.
Revisiting an Old Game
I recently got back into playing “Total Annihilation: Kingdoms”, one of my absolute favorite games of all time. I particularly like the sides “Veruna” (a force with excellent navy presence) and “Taros” (the “dark side”). Aramon is okay and Zhon and Creon, not so much…
The game has an excellent campaign with a great story, and came with a 40pg booklet full of lore and info (which, sadly, I discarded a few years ago). Ultimately, I spend most of my time playing the machine in free battles.
I also have the expansion pack, which comes with dozens of extra maps and a second campaign (and the side of “Creon”, a sort of steampunk force).
Not Skyrim but… Morrowind!
A few years ago I got Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind on Steam for very little money on a sale, so I could play Elder Scrolls on a cheap laptop with a poor graphics card. I got Skyrim around the same time and spent most of my time on that.
Recently I’ve come back to Morrowind and it’s such a phenomenal, immersive, very otherworldly experience. I feel like Skyrim, while graphically superior, doesn’t have quite the originality of Morrowind. Both the creatures and the vegetation are just plain weird. I personally love exploring the dark elves’ Vivee location, a seemingly mazelike winding of corridors on multiple levels in giant constructions.
I’ll be playing more for sure… and after 9 hours I’m still level 1, as I’ve focused so much on exploring and conversing with characters rather than battle.
Retro Game Review – “Dragon Warrior” for NES
Game Title: Dragon Warrior
Game System: NES
Rating
Graphics: 7 / 10
Gameplay: 8 / 10
Replay Value: 4 / 10
Difficulty: This game is more a time investment than a difficult challenge
I finally beat this game a week or two ago. It’s one of my absolute favorite old RPGs, and was a fairly early hack and slash RPG. The premise is you’re a warrior tasked with defeating the dragonlord to basically save the world. You’ll spend most of your time leveling up to face more and more difficult dungeons and roaming monsters over the course of maybe 20 hours. You wander around an overworld map facing enemies that appear at random intervals, wandering from town to town and speaking to locals for clues to the fairly simple puzzles/hidden items spread throughout the game.
Gold, to buy better weapons, armor and items, as well as room and board at inns to restore health and magic points, is difficult to amass early in the game but is absurdly plentiful later on. As you level up and have increased stats, you face enemies that both provide more XP and more gold, making it possible to buy increasingly expensive and powerful weapons and armor.
The best part of the game is the monster fighting sequences. Each monster has a brightly colored image that pops up when you encounter the enemy. Some monsters are just variations of color or minor detail built upon other monster art, but there are many unique designs overall.
The most dangerous part of the game is questing too long and letting your health get so low that you can’t make it back home – but the entire time I played I only died a few times.
Overall a classic RPG for the NES that’s a blast to play once, but not so much a second time.