Fahrenheit 451 (1984)

Genre: Text Input / Strategy  |  Players: 1  |  Developers: Byron Preiss Video Productions, Inc / Trillium Corp.

Some games are too damn hard. It makes conquering them all the sweeter, but sometimes the elevated difficulty is in place simply to give the illusion of longevity. Fahrenheit 451 is difficult for a different reason. It's a text-based adventure/strategy game that puts you in the shoes of someone from Ray Bradbury’s novel (1953) of the same name. Now an established member of the underground, returned to the city five years after the novel's end, you must circumvent the book-burning populace as you try to set right past wrongs.

Being set after the novel means if you've not read it prior to playing then you'll have a portion of it spoiled for you, so a reading is advised. I'd encourage every fan of sci-fi to read the actual book regardless of whether or not they’ll ever play the game because it's a classic of the genre. If you need more convincing I've a review of the novel HERE on a sister site that's free of plot spoilers.

In-game you’ll be reading text (ironic, isn't it?) and responding by typing instructions, such as ‘S’ when you want to go South. However, the instructions must be VERY specific. If it tells you there’s an item in front of you, e.g. a lighter, what do you instruct the game to do? Lift lighter? Pick up lighter? Take lighter? Obtain lighter? No; after an agonisingly high number of tries I discovered that ‘Get lighter’ is the one that works. That’s an early and easy example. It gets more gruelling as you get deeper into the game. Every puzzle halts progress until you eliminate all other logical options before stumbling upon the accepted one. (I'm guessing such actions were explained in the game's inlay or manual, but it's now 30+ years after it was released and I don't have the luxury of owning such a thing.)

That's infuriating enough, but speaking to people is pure hell. The game needs to know that you aren't issuing a simple command, so dialogue must be set within quotation marks. So far so good; it's 1984 after all. But unless you tell people exactly what they want to hear then you might as well be talking to a wall, while repeatedly being wrong is like banging your head against one.

YES or NO responses are fine, but you need to also use literary quotations at opportune times, which means you'll have to have found them and recorded them verbatim. It's an interesting mechanic and very in keeping with how the fictional society is split, but it's a pain in the ass in a practical sense.

Bradbury fans will of course be curious to try it for themselves, but be prepared to reach levels of frustration that you may not have hitherto known existed.

2 burned eyes out of 5

Ranko Tsukigime's Longest Day (2013)

Genre: Platformer | Players: 1 | Developers: Grasshopper Manufacture, Crispy's Inc.

RTLD is a side-scrolling platformer written by Suda 51 and directed by Yohei Kataoka. It’s available on the Short Peace bluray (see above box art), a disc that contains four short anime films and one PS3 game. It’s a hybrid disc that’ll play the anime portion in any bluray player and the game in a PS3. You can view the anime section in your PS3, too, if you scroll to the video section on the XMB.

Each portion takes ‘Japan’ as its inspiration. The animes took a refined approach to the subject matter, but the game went tits-out and packed in a plethora of references from past and present; it’s a smörgåsbord of Japanese culture that'll have weaboos pissing themselves in excitement. There’s panties, guns, schoolgirls, costumes, a flying dragon, wrestlers, swords and Akira references presented as either pixels, anime, manga or visual novel-esque cut scenes.

It looks beautiful, filled with colour and oozing visual creativity, but you’ll be too busy hurrying though each short level to be able to appreciate it fully. You can’t stop and explore the environment because you’re being pursued from the left of the screen by something. Yes, something. I've no clue what it actually was, except for the time it was a giant, hungry Pomeranian. The only levels you'll have time to enjoy are the boss levels, but they’re even less fun to play. They can be frustrating until you figure out what the hell you're supposed to be doing.

Another aspect of Japanese media carried through into the game is that it makes very little sense. It's like a late 80s OVA. It's tongue-in-cheek about it, though.

As one-fifth of the Short Peace experience it’s a welcome addition, but as a game it’s more of a visual treat than a gamer-treat. Even factoring in the time taken to fail and repeat stages (from the beginning of each one, every time!) it'll take approximately one hour to get from beginning to end. A Let’s Play might be more fun than an actual play; you’d at least be able to appreciate how pretty it all is.

2 unmaskings out of 5

NOTE: A short review of the films can be read on our sister site, In a Nutshell. I found it more rewarding (and less confusing) than the game portion. See HERE.

Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rainslick Precipice Of Darkness: Episode 2 (2008)

Genre: RPG | Players: 1 | Developer: Hothead Games

Part 2 begins hilariously similar to the 1st as the PA protagonists, Gabe and Tycho, accidentally wreck the new abode of the player character that had just been rebuilt. The player character is pretty chill about it this time around and is recruited to continue the search for the creator of the ongoing miniature robot menace as well as the giant robot responsible for his house's first destruction which has still evaded sweet vengeance. The same aesthetics and atmosphere are intact with slightly less an air of mystery and a bit more horror, though still mostly rooted in the original comic's sense of humor.

Nothing much has changed, only minor details like Tycho switching out a machine gun for a shotgun and the player character using a hoe as a weapon rather than his original rake. There are new enemies and new special attacks, but it all works the same way with an active time battle system that can be enhanced with good blocking by pressing the spacebar with correct timing. The battles are, like the first game, all substantial as they all have the potential to be dangerous unlike other RPGs. Learning correct blocking and the enemies' weaknesses is key to advancing. The learning curve might be a little steeper this time around as the latter half of the game pretty much requires learning the ins and outs of the battle system. In the first episode, a player could probably squeak by to the final boss having not mastered most of the battle system, but this time around the enemies can wreck you in seconds later on without some semblance of gained skill.

While it is more of the same, that doesn't always have to be a bad thing. The new enemies and continued absurdist steampunk narrative were still engaging. The same problem still applies in that only existing fans of Penny Arcade will get the most out of it or just a connoisseur of RPGs looking for something a little different. Casual players will get little out of the distinct humor if not even a little turned off by it. I think having some experience with it made me enjoy this one perhaps a little bit more.

Buyer's Guide:
Available for digital download on PC, Mac, XBLA and PSN.

4 cock fighting robot monkeys out of 5

Dune 2000 (1999)

Genre: Real-time Strategy (RTS)  |  Players: 1 or Multi (link)  |  Developer: Westwood Studios / Intelligent Games

NOTE: I'll mention the PC version (1998) briefly at the end, but I want to cover the PS1 port in some detail because console versions of RTS games are often frowned upon by PC aficionados and I feel that the PS1 version deserves actual praise.

Dune 2000 is a remake/update of Dune II: Battle for Arrakis (1992), originally developed by Westwood Studios, creators of Command and Conquer. Dune was first, though, so in a way it's Westwood's RTS granddaddy. (Wiki states that II was based on David Lynch's filmed version (1984) of Frank Herbert's seminal sci-fi novel Dune (1965), but you can make the transition to 2000 from the novel without needing to have seen the film, and vice-versa.)

You first choose an allegiance to one of three Great Houses: the 'noble' Atreides, the 'evil' Harkonnen, or the 'insidious' Ordos. Each campaign has ten missions, so that's thirty in all if you decide to replay as the others afterwards. Most missions will have you trying desperately to utterly obliterate the enemy or enemies and/or take control of their resources. It's far from easy.

Time will be split between fortifying your base and building an invading army. All of that costs money, and like the real world you make more money by having a stock sum to begin with. Money is attained by spice mining, so at least one harvester is essential - more if you can afford it because there are worms!

With money being tight, you'll be forced to choose what's best to build while mitigating the damage taken from the attacking enemy forces. If your forces drop below a certain level then coming back is almost impossible and it’s the slow death for you. You may just as well walk into a coriolis storm.

The DualShock does a decent job of translating the actions of a PC mouse. Both sticks move the camera over the entirety of the map while the four face buttons perform other important functions. Jumping into and out of the sidebar menu is achieved by a simple button-press. While there the left stick becomes your means of selecting what to build or upgrade. What's beneficial about the set-up is that while in the menu the right stick is then able to move the camera, effectively letting you attend to two tasks at once. You can even assign the face buttons to specific troops (up to four legions) for quick selections on the field.

Before I end I have to mention the live-action cut scenes—they're obviously green-screen, but they add much to the experience—and the excellent music that oozes the perfect atmosphere. What's more, with it being a PS1 disc you can pop it into your PC drive and play the music without needing to boot up the game!

4 deadly spice blows out of 5

The PC version will of course provide the ultimate Dune 2000 experience. Consider the GruntMods Edition. It has higher textures, supports HD up to 1080p and will run flawlessly on most Windows platforms and on Mac. The game speed can be tweaked and you can even design your own levels. Hooray for mods.

Chrono Trigger (1995)

Genre: RPG  |  Players: 1  |  Developer: Squaresoft

Chrono Trigger is arguably one of, if not the most, refined and polished RPGs ever released by Square Ltd. in the 16-bit era.  A game so perfect for its time that it gave the impression Final Fantasy VI was made years before, while in reality only a mere eleven months stand between both releases.

The game puts you in the shoes of Chrono, a young boy from the town of Truce, in the quiet kingdom of Gardia.  On the first day of the millennial fair that commemorates the thousand years of the kingdom he will encounter Marle and start a journey across time to save both the past and the future, making new friends on the way, among which are a frog-knight, a robot from a post-apocalyptic future, and others...

The technical aspect of the game is really great: the graphics make use of all the abilities of the SNES, giving us the abilities to explore a vast and colourful world, and the chara-designs by Toriyama Akira, full of mirth and winks to his career, are very well-rendered on screen.

The music (always one major cool point for Square's SNES games) is very impressive.  Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu outdid themselves, as it may well be the best SNES soundtrack by Square's team.

Gameplay-wise, the game is excellent; putting you at the head of a team of three that you can select more or less freely, the difficulty is well-balanced, the combat system is an evolved version of the Active Time Battle system that allows for a bit more strategy in using zone attacks and offers the possibility of making collective attacks.  The gameplay also uses the time-travel aspect of the game, requiring you to sometimes perform an action in the past to unblock something in the future.

Finally, the story is exceptionally well-written, full of humour, and explores quite nicely the various aspects and implications of time travel, both good and bad, in a very intelligent and coherent manner.  It's also, at times, pretty emotional and will make you feel involved in the story and the characters' destiny, which is the mark of great RPGs.

If you have to have only ONE RPG on SNES, get this one.

If you liked it you might enjoy: Final Fantasy VI, Lufia II, Dragon Quest VI.

5 luminaire followed by Dark Matter out of 5.

Nutted by Docrate1.

Ratchet: Gladiator (2005 / 2013 in HD)

Genre: Platformer  |  Players: 1 or 2 co-op  |  Developer: Insomniac Games (original PS2 edition) / Idol Minds (PS3 port)

Prior to Gladiator (aka Ratchet: Deadlocked (NA) / Ratchet and Clank 4 (JP)), all of the HD updates I’d played had been successful, but it’s impossible to outrun the law of averages forever. It had to happen eventually. I got a shitty one.

If you received the game free because of the QForce/Full Frontal Assault (2012) delay then you can offset the cheapness somewhat, but if you bought it as a standalone entry then there’s every reason to expect a product that’s worth the price paid, particularly when Idol Minds did such a sterling job on the previous collection. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is that the lack of care and respect that went into the conversion makes me hesitant to trust them in future.

FMV scenes are repeatedly jerky and there are times when the foreground textures go inexplicably transparent, enabling the backgrounds to be visible through them. Is the jerkiness a PAL thing? Is the NTSC version the same? I don't know. All I know is that interactions between characters during those times are an important part of the R+C experience, and they've been treated badly.

Mercifully, once you gain control of Ratchet the game works. There’s still slowdown during heated moments, but it's easy to adjust to. The only notable exception is when the game pauses you in mid-swing over a bottomless death-gap so that it can load the platform on which you're planning to land.

The arena challenges that were a small part of the previous games are the sole aspect of Gladiator. It’s not always confined to a small area, but it is essentially a series of bouts/ battles that get increasingly more challenging and frustratingly hectic as you progress. I acknowledge that a large number of people will feel the direct opposite, but I need more than just shooting/ advancing toward endless waves; the balance that was achieved in previous games was sorely missed.

Gun-fans may feel equally short-changed when it comes to the limited array of weapons available. They can level up to insane proportions but there's a lesser number to play around with than long-time players will be used to.

In a series known for OTT weaponry and ballsy humour, being underwhelming hurts more than it would otherwise; it means that it failed to do its job as well as it should have, and will hold the interest of only the most ardent or forgiving fan.

2½ ratings wars out of 5

The Ratchet & Clank Trilogy: Classics HD (2012)

Genre: Platformer  |  Players: 1 / Up to 8 Online (R+C 3 only)  |  Developer: Insomniac Games (original PS2 editions) / Idol Minds (PS3 port) / Mass Media Inc. (PSV port)

Replaying the first three R+C games was even more fun than I'd expected it to be, and my hopes were pretty high to begin with.  The revisit brought to light something that can be viewed primarily in one of two ways: it either shows how little the series changed over a short number of years (2002-04), or it highlights how spot-on the devs at Insomniac got the formula on their first try.  I sit firmly in the latter camp while acknowledging the former from afar.

I'm not implying that the first game is perfect.  It clearly isn't.  It’s the only one of the three without a strafe manoeuvre, making it a lot harder than it could've been otherwise.  There’s a workaround but it’s not ideal.  On the plus side, Clank’s first words are of the series-defining innuendo variety.

The second game, known as R+C: Locked and Loaded (EU); R+C: Going Commando (US); or simply as R+C 2 (JP), remedied the lack of strafe and nailed the voices that we've come to know and instantly recognise.  The platforming and guns were better, and there are more forgiving checkpoints throughout.
For my money the only stains on an otherwise perfect gaming experience are the frustrating glider sections that require a lot of patience and more than a little trial and error, and the awful Clank on the Moon missions.  In fact, in all three games the Clank parts are more of a necessary chore than an enjoyable break.  They were included to offer gamers variety, but if they could be removed it would make R+C 2 a strong contender for the best 3D platformer on a Sony machine.

R+C 3 (EU + JP), known as R+C: Up Your Arsenal in the US, tweaked the formula a little more, but with R+C 2 being so good there wasn't a lot they could do besides add more inventive weapons and not cock-up anything that already worked perfectly.  To that end, they cranked the innuendo lever even harder.

The replay value of each game is more than generous.  If it takes X amount of time to finish, it’ll take at least 2X to mop up the bonus stuff.  You've access to even more destructive weapons on your second playthrough, known as Challenge Mode.  During C Mode you keep the majority of your inventory and every bolt you've earned.  Being fully armed from the start means it’s easier to progress, but the enemies are more dangerous so it’s not completely effortless.

The port from PS2 to PS3 by Idol Minds doesn't harm the games in any way.  They even kept the multi-player aspect of R+C 3 intact, making it fully playable over PSN.  I didn't care to try it, but it's a notable addition, nonetheless.

It's one of Sony's 'Cross Buy' titles, but I can't comment on the PSV versions.  I'm not one of the half-dozen people in the UK that actually own a PSV.

4 socioeconomic disparities out of 5