You wouldn't believe how often I've gotten Jet Force Gemini's title wrong because of a certain other Jet Something Something game from the past. It's safe to say that I'm much more familiar with that than I am with this Rare title for the Nintendo 64, and I've barely skated and spraypainted at the same time in video gaming as a whole, so we're talking next to zero knowledge - just the way I like it.
Jet Force Gemini follows the story of some space police or something as they attempt to thwart the galactic spread of insects. Giant, weapon-wielding insects. Insects as big as bears. Bigger, even. This is serious business.
Blimey, it's been a long time since I've been sat down in front of a blank blog canvas like this. Life, as it was always going to, got in the way a little bit, but I now find myself mostly settled and ready to crack on with the rest of the 1001 list, and the return title is quite the entry.
Hot off the heels of the insanely popular Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII stretches out a little (a design choice I would much rather look at than the animated potatoes of FF7), taking us to a world that's a little more familiar to that of our own - save for the introduction seeing students taking a final exam in the middle of an active military conflict, I suppose.
It was one of the first games I watched a Let's Play of, back in the day, and I watched it because I hadn't played it even further back in the day when it came out. Let's see how far I can get, and whether I'll be distracted by mini-games.
Don't touch the controls until you are told to do so.
Is there anything as cool as a dogfight in space? Lasers pew-pewing their way into the infinite void as giant ships float in place in front of giant starlit gas clouds? I'm sure there is, but while FreeSpace 2 is filling up my vision, no there isn't.
Another joystick controlled space combat sim, this one is more chilled than past offerings. There's still plenty of buttons to target various opponents, cycle through weapons, alter your energy balance and what not, but you don't have to worry about that darned Newton fella and his physics. They're present but relaxed. You want to stop in the middle of space? You can stop in the middle of space, no need to calculate a week beforehand.
Horror isn't exactly my thing. Surviving is something I'll do if I have to but otherwise isn't really my thing either. Survival horror as a genre then isn't what I'd call 'my cup of tea'. However, this isn't a list of games that are my cup of tea, it's a list of 1001 games I ought to have played before I can no longer drink tea, and my eyes continue to be opened with survival horror Silent Hill.
You are Harry Mason, a skinny dude with no useful skills relating to surviving or dealing with horror, save for empathy and devotion to finding a missing child. A noble cause for a normal man, but unfortunately for Harry it's all going to take place in the supernatural fog-covered titular Silent Hill, a town empty of people, but full of horror.
Don't you just love it when Life sneaks up on you and everything changes? Your norms are now your no-mores, your routines are regularly uprooted, and you just can't see when things will next go back to the way they were. What if we could cope by just getting sucked into a parallel dimension that inevitably leads to a grand adventure that requires us to save the world?
Actually, that'd exacerbate the problem. Let's not do that. Let's instead, finally, get around to playing age-old games I've never come across before and see what all the fuss is about, with not-a-sequel to the SNES RPG Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, kicking things back into gear.
Arcade racers tend to be arcadey in their driving physics, but there's no reason to not go down the simulation route instead, and that's exactly what Sega did with F355 Challenge, the Ferrari branded racer that tests your actual driving skill.
Supposedly. I don't have a three-screen arcade cabinet to try out, but I do have the PlayStation 2 port from a few years later, which was helpfully called Ferrari F355 Challenge, to really hammer that branding home. How will it stack up to the 'real driving simulator' that is the Gran Turismo series? Should we even compare the two? Have I waffled enough for this introduction?
While the first Grand Theft Auto game I played was the original, the first GTA game I consider to have actually played, rather than driven around in for ten minutes at a time, would be GTA III. Whatever happened to Grand Theft Auto 2?
I would answer that by saying that I didn't have the interest back then, but I'd be more correct in saying that I didn't have the knowledge that GTA 2 existed. Despite having a PlayStation at the time, I must have been playing something else. I can't even remember playing a demo like I had done with GTA.
Sssshhhhhh! We're not supposed to be here at The 401/1001 Milestone Awards, an unauthorized and completely irrelevant look at the latest batch of video game titles from 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die.
Don't tell anyone, but this Milestone Awards post will look over everything from Star Fox 64 to Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves in this one and my unofficial sources say that these awards are going to be full of bias and prejudice based on childhood memories, but don't let that stop you from finding out what I thought of these games - just be aware that the PlayStation might dominate...
We begin as ever by getting The Indifferent 5 out of the way, because they're games that I find to be particularly... gamey? Average? Just generally there? They're games that have to take a back seat because there are other, better games, but that's not to say that these are stinkers. I have it on good authority that I'm just opinionated and these may well be worth your time. They are, in no particular order:
Congratulations Konami, who continue to develop indifferent games.
Moving swiftly onto the award that nobody wants to get, though I've done absolutely no research into asking that question to anybody: What Was That 1 Even Put On The List For? It was an instant pick this time around. There was only ever going to be one winner/loser.
What Was Sega Bass Fishing Even Put On The List For? There's no pla(i)ce for you here.
A 1001 list needs 1001 games on it, so my insiders say, and they've come up with a title to replace that fishing travesty. The opponents you face still have scales, so long as popular media trumps scientific discovery, but these foes are an awful lot bigger...
We shout You Forgot What?! and we shout:
Trespasser is a forgotten gold mine of video gaming, and that video up there is (or was) often hailed as the definitive way to play a game on YouTube. It's so good, I think I'm going to have another watch of it this afternoon. Watching it is easier than playing it, that's for sure.
Uncovering The Top Ten is the real reason we're lurking in these Milestone Awards, however, so it's time to crack on with the best of the bunch. Fifty games, less those that involve fishing or are otherwise unnoteworthy, fighting it out to get to the top of the list. I said it might be full of PlayStation titles. Let's see if it is.
10:ChuChu Rocket!, Sonic Team
In a batch of games with the first 3D Sonic title, Sonic Team makes the top ten with a puzzle game about space mice fleeing from space cats. I think it's clear I have issues with that hedgehog.
9: Xenogears, Square Product Development Division 3
I kept playing and playing and playing and then caught a glimpse of a Mech and that was about it. Need to get back to it and hunt them down.
8:F-Zero X, Nintendo EAD Wipeout has competition, and it's taken me twenty years to realise that.
7:Banjo Kazooie, Rare
As one of the earliest games I remember watching on YouTube, it's got a funny kind of nostalgic place in my brain, despite not having played it to any real lengths at all.
6:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo EAD
Credit to Nintendo for making something that I couldn't put down. I eventually did, of course, but then immediately wanted to pick it up again.
5:Quake II, id Software
A similar situation to Zelda, I was playing Quake for longer than I thought I would be playing it for, but it edges the juggernaut through its genre.
4:Half-Life, Valve
Speaking of the first person shooter genre... With so many ways to play it, Half-Life edges past Quake II, and while I prefer straight sci-fi over horror, I'll take some weird stuff happening in the style of Half-Life with no problems.
3:Snake, Nokia
You don't know how much I played this across my first few phones. I don't know how much I played it. I wouldn't even call myself good, but that's not going to stop it from climbing high on this list.
2: Tekken 3, Namco
A few fighting games in this latest run of games, but it's the 3D fighter in the form of Tekken 3 that stands above the rest in my eyes.
The PlayStation reached as high as the second spot; did it manage to reach number 1? The list contains Metal Gear Solid, of course it managed to reach number 1. This game was insane to me back in the day. You don't write to the addresses you find in the manuals unless you care, and by God did I care.
What else do I care about? Trying to cram these games into The Topper Than That Top Ten list, which contains the ten best titles from the 401 we've seen so far, at the time of writing. There's no consistency when it comes to these rankings any more, and certainly no objectivity, but let's see what's still clinging onto the highest spots and what has taken the place of those less fortunate.
10:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo EAD
I have to say, I didn't think this one would appear this low on the list, even with me being a PlayStation kid, but here it is.
9:Quake II, id Software
When looking back, I might question how this one got so high.
8:Super Mario World, Nintendo EAD
The plumber still lives, though his platforming is plat-falling down the list.
7:GoldenEye 007, Rare
Only a few weeks ago, I was watching about how GoldenEye 007 speed run records are still falling, with players discovering strategies untried in twenty years.
6:Half-Life, Valve
Will O.G. Gordon rank higher than his sequel incarnation? This is the benchmark to beat.
1:Metal Gear Solid, Konami
I never thought I'd compare Metal Gear to Con Air but I have and it's stuck. This one might stay a while.
And that's that. That's another unapproved Milestone Awards list, and we won't officially appear again until another fifty games have flown in front of our eyes. The first of them to state what they've got is a little game by the name of Grand Theft Auto 2. I think I've played a few sequels to that one.
Whatever you think about these demonstrably biased lists, do game on. Games are gooood.
Another fighter, another game in need of some Dreamcast emulation, though the Dreamcast wasn't the first home for Fatal Fury: Mark of the Wolves, and that wasn't the first name for Garou: Mark of the Wolves either, but that's what we're playing.
Originally in the arcades and then on the Neo Geo, Mark of the Wolves simplifies some of the series' history to make it easier for newcomers to pick it up and play with any character they care for. That sounds like just what I need, so let's not waste time putting it to the test.
"Make your first move, so what's in gon' be? You're trapped in the new world of Street Fighter 3"
And once more we return to the franchise fighter, this time in the guise of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, or Street Fighter II 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future, if you're that way inclined. The third game of the third game, 3rd Strike sees refinements and additions and polish to the foundations that have been progressively laid down in place since the series' origins, and like the last time out, I'm only going to be happy if I land a super duper flashy move...
"Play with three friends for the ultimate battle."
You might not think a game called ChuChu Rocket! describes itself, but it actually does. Sort of. Such a title doesn't tell you anything about the genre, or what it looks like, or how difficult it is, but - according to the story in the manual - it actually is descriptive.
Our task is to load safely load ChuChus onto rockets. ChuChu Rockets, if you will. And that's all the explanation you nee- of course it isn't. This is an action puzzle the likes of which I probably have seen, but the form I've seen it in wasn't ChuChu Rocket! but I'm willing to bet was inspired by ChuChu Rocket! because I can't think of any other game like it right about now.
I need to get a move on though, as these rockets need some passengers.
Some video game titles just scream 'Japanese release' to me, and Silhouette Mirage is one of them. You just don't get titles like that from western developers; titles that don't quite sound right and give few hints as to what's going on with the game itself, if any.
But a game is much much more than its title, and this one will have us platform run and gunning our way around the place, shooting things in particular ways. What on Earth do I mean by that?
I know these monkeys. Not personally - I know of them. I know they made their way into Metal Gear Solid 3 and Little Big Planet in one form or another, and I know they come from the Ape Escape series - but I've no idea what that series is actually about, other than capturing escaping primates.
The only title from the series to make the 1001 list is the first, and I suspect that the reason for its inclusion is not for the plot, which we'll get to soon enough, but for the fact that this is the first game to require players to own a controller capable of, and then use dual analogue controls on a home console (better slip that caveat in there to cover my arse in case an arcade title got their first...) - a controller configuration that I, for one, have been using for 20 years now, across multiple console generations.
I've certainly used the now-standard PlayStations' controller then, but have never played Ape Escape. I'm not expecting the greatest use of analogue controls in video game history, but I am expecting plenty of monkeys. Let's see what we end up with.
I have only recently taken a look at the state of Sega Dreamcast emulation, knowing that I'm heading into that part of video gaming history. I didn't have a Dreamcast. I couldn't even tell you anyone who did have one - none of us needed one, the PlayStation 2 was just fine, thank you very much. But the PlayStation 2 didn't have Bangai-O, and that makes me... well, I don't know yet.
It looks like you're a little Mech shooting far too many rockets at something, and going by that alone, Bangai-O should be smashing. But I'm not going to go by that alone. It's time to fire it up and find out what's going on.
It has not only been an age since I found myself playing Age of Empires for this 1001 blog but an age since I've been able to sit down and write this one after playing Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings, the sequel to the Warcraft meets Civilization offering from Ensemble Studios.
The original game had kept my interest for a while until bone-headedness on my part scuppered my chances of a victory. I liked it and would be on the lookout for delayed but soon to be appearing Definitive Edition release.
To be honest with you, I very quickly forgot to keep an eye out for that, but not so for Age of Empires II, as it's the HD Edition that I'll be playing for this post.
How well will we develop our empire? Will I again run out of food and find myself with only a single villager on the map? Nothing can be answered into we dive in and find out.
There have been (or will be) twelve films that feature the Alien, the Predator or both. Of those twelve, I have seen one, because how can you not have seen Predator? I say this just to make it clear that when it comes to playing Aliens versus Predator, I'm not playing as a die-hard fan of one or both franchises.
First-person shooters can take us to all kinds of places and have us do many different things, and their immersion can make for some great gaming moments. Aliens versus Predator does what it should always have done - give players the ability to immerse themselves into the boots of the Predator, the... feet of the Alien, and the shoes of the unfortunate Colonial Marine caught in the middle in three campaigns of action and suspense.
Knowing what I know, how long will I survive against these off-world foes?
I live on the coast. I can see the sea from my window. It's been like that for 30 years. How many times have I fished? Once. It sucked. I got the line stuck in a wall and didn't see the point in trying to retrieve it.
I don't care for fishing. I don't get fishing. Fishing for food I get, obviously, but fishing for fun or sport (is it even a sport?) I cannot fathom.
But I do, unfortunately, concede that it can be gamified quite easily, and that's what Sega decided to do, unleashing Sega Bass Fishing onto the world in the late 1990s, complete with fishing reel controllers.
There are some games I really looked forward to on this 1001 list. Be they games I'd really wanted to play and hadn't or games that I haven't played since they first came out, there was also something upcoming that I knew I was going to enjoy.
I was going to enjoy going back to playing Driver for the first time in nearly twenty years, not because of its take on car chases filmed in the 1970s, but because of that driving test.
Infamous in its difficulty, this entry might be over before it starts...
Hello. I wonder if I could have a moment of your time...
Zelda has never quite fully appealed to me. They've warranted watching them, in part or in whole, at speed or at leisure, across the systems that the series has spanned, but to get me sat down in front of a game of Zelda has been a task.
It wasn't until going through this 1001 list to actually take some time to play them that I've gone "No, actually, I think I get it now" with regards to just how good they are as games. I still need to go back to play A Link to the Past some more. I still want to, which is a little surprising to me.
Will the series' leap into the third dimension result in similar desires? Can The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time live up to the hype and convert me into a Zelda fan? I think it's about time I picked up a controller and found out.
At the time of writing, Emuparadise has announced that while its doors aren't closing, the contents of the house are nowhere to be found. Maybe they've been stolen by a thief, trained to deftly move through the darkness in a thieving simulator like Thief: The Dark Project.
A mostly medieval first person stealth-er dotted with steampunk and horror, Thief drops us into the shoes of Garrett, a thief (as you could have guessed) who will have to use his skills for missions he might not have thought he'd ever take on. Missions that start simply enough, but soon scale towards a plot involving some rather rowdy folks being welcomed into the world - and we're going to have to put a stop to that.
Get your gamma slider at the ready, because we're about to turn the lights off and skulk in the shadows.
Millions upon millions of copies sold. Spawned an entire gaming culture in South Korea. Is the origins of the term 'Zerg rush'. Have I played StarCraft? Chuh, yuh, of course I've played StarCraft...
Took me twenty years, but I managed it.
The RTS genre has its bastions and mainstays, and while I'm rather familiar with Command & Conquer, I am most definitely not familiar with StarCraft, save for it being sci-fi and full of rushing Zergs. And I suppose it was one of the first e-Sports I knew about before I really knew what an e-Sport was. I don't know. I know it's got a dedicated following for one reason or another, and it's about time I found out what that reason was.
This looks a lot different from the original Ridge Racer, doesn't it? That classic kicked off the PlayStation generation, and to my mind, would be left in the dust by Gran Turismo and it's sequel. In fact, my memory of racing games on the PlayStation is so dominated by Gran Turismo that I could not for the life of me have told you that there were three sequels to Ridge Racer before the PlayStation 2 would come along.
Four Ridge Racer titles and the second one of those worthy enough of an entry on the 1001 list was R4: Ridge Racer Type 4.
It's said to be quite the looker, which is blasphemy to the ears of a GT fan, but we'll rev our engines and see how much rubber we can melt to the track to find out.
I'm finding it hard to write an introduction to Space Station Silicon Valley. My reactions to it have been mixed, bordering on the negative, yet I'm intrigued enough about it to stop and question myself. Am I judging it too harshly, like the consumers did back in the late 1990s by not buying it?
It is the future, and you are a microchip taking over robotic animal host bodies in an attempt to navigate three-dimensional levels full of objectives to complete and points to score. If that doesn't sound gripping enough, its sense of humour and style of plot delivery might sway you, but I should really explain what I mean by that with some images.
"I don't know where this ship came from but it is definitely not within legal specifications."
When I grew up with the PlayStation consoles, I thought I had it all. If I wanted to play an aerial combat game set in the Star Wars universe, I'd just fire up something like Jedi Starfighter and get blasting. I completed it a couple of times, I think; it was that good.
It didn't make the 1001 list, though. Instead, along with the two games we've already seen in the form of TIE Fighter and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter on the PC, we've got two more for Nintendo systems. I've been injured, insulted, and am about to be kicked while I'm down.
Think you've played good Star Wars games? Bah! Fire up Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.
Isometric puzzle games. The words don't fill me with hope, but Wetrix is a complete unknown to me and finds itself on the 1001 list despite being an isometric puzzle game, and so we should give it the time to shine and show itself off.
Get your engineering skills all ship shape because you're about to hold some water. I think.
Skim reading my own backlog blog, I've reminded myself that Sonic the Hedgehog was pretty good and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was more of the same but not as interesting. They're short posts, considering some of the other entries here, which either means that I'm so bad at a game that I couldn't contribute much towards it, or I'm so bored with the game that I don't care enough to write anything lengthy about it.
Sonic was at risk of heading in that direction, but in this new wide world of three dimensions, a new Sonic title might just be the kick I need to get stuck in. But why have a Sonic title when you can have a Sonic Adventure?
Horror isn't my thing. I've seen some stuff, don't get me wrong, but it's a genre that I can happily let others play around in. It's surprising that I got through more of Resident Evil than I thought I was going to, but I was still nowhere near close to knowing what it means to survive all this horror.
Enter the sequel then, Resident Evil 2. The Zombies return. The day is to be saved once again. This time, we're not confined to a mansion, but a city. Probably a small one, I don't know yet.
Before we find out, know that the warnings are out again:
A good while ago now, I played Street Fighter II' Turbo: Hyper Fighting, which was a mouthful and an education in how severely lacking I am in the skills department when it comes to 2D fighters. But, piss-poor as I was, I found it as fun as I thought I would, and could see why it became the juggernaut that it is today.
Fast forward however many years and the next title of the series to make the 1001 list is Street Fighter Alpha 3, which is a sequel of a spin-off, if I'm not mistaken, and I probably am because I haven't looked that up. I think I'm mistaken. Assume I'm mistaken.
Mistaken or not, this game is apparently glossed over by those who take Street Fighter tournaments very seriously, but I wouldn't know that either. I am absolutely clueless here, really. There's only one thing that I can do - fight.
Going through this rather long list of games, there have been times where I've been excited to get a game of something going. It might be because I hadn't played it before, or that I knew nothing about it and wondered how it was good enough to make it into the 1001 list. In this case, the more I got back into Metal Gear Solid for the first time in a looong time, the more I wanted to not write anything about it and keep playing instead.
I used to watch much more TV than I do nowadays, and when browsing channels to pass the time there would often be a film on, and I - like many others, I'm sure - have a list of films that just make you stop and watch them. Take Con Air for example. You can't not watch it. It's a masterpiece. Face/Off. Speed. Die Hard with a Vengeance. True Lies. The list goes on and on, come to think about it.
They're all movies that took over the evening, usually each and every time I found out that they were on. They all happen to be action movies, but the likes of Grosse Pointe Blank and The Devils Advocate also have their place in the (apparently growing) handful of movies that I attribute with 'must watch, right here, right now'.
That's my long-winded way of saying that Metal Gear Solid found itself on the 'must play, right here, right now' list, despite having completed it many a time before, so you can probably guess how this post will turn out...
Some platformers are not like the others, are they? Some platformers are just unusual. Odd, you might say. Some of these odd platformers star an equally odd character in the form of a Mudokon called Abe, and one of those games is Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus.
The original game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, sticks out in my mind for its visual style. It and its sequel here are odd. They are platform puzzlers staring alien creatures whose mouths or eyes have been sewn shut by their captors, who are using them as slaves to mine their own ancestors' bones for use in an energy drink, SoulStorm Brew.
In order to free our fellow Mudokons, we must navigate them towards portals made of birds, while obviously trying not to be caught or killed by the Glukkon guards. The plot, like the game, is odd, so let's find out where the sequel takes us.
Bless you. Bless you. Blimey, are you allergic to these dice?
I'm a board gamer. I'm a (currently former) role player. I know my dice. My die? Whatever. I also know Devil Dice, for it is one of the demos on the greatest demo disc in history (Official PlayStation Magazine UK No. 42, in case you're wondering).
However... Video games have surprised me before, and they'll surprise me again. It has been around 19 and half years since that demo disc made it into my hands, and it has taken that long for me to learn that this game started like as a Net Yaroze project - a homebrew, of sorts.
Mind blown. I've kinda ruined the Fun Fact segment of this post now. Should have saved it.
I came to the PC late in life, and many of the greatest games to be found out there have passed me by, or have been ported over with usually less than ideal results. For many games, if I can't play them, I've got no problems with watching them - and that's still the case today. I've seen Half-Life many times before, in many forms. I know of the kind of game it is, the kind of world it's set in, and the kind of things it did to warrant its place in seemingly all the top ten lists. But I don't really know how it plays.
To my knowledge, this past week was my first time playing the original Half-Life, despite having salvaged a copy from the rubbish a few years ago, and probably having been given a copy by Steam at some point too. I also got the fan-made remake, Black Mesa from somewhere, I think the Humble Monthly Bundle, and so I decided I'd compare the three while I'm at it.
It is the future (or maybe the past by now, I can't remember), and the young, quiet theoretical physicist called Gordon Freeman is about to have a rather unusual day at work...
When I look back at the long list of point and click adventure games to have come from the 1001 list so far, I see a fair few titles that I actually want to play again. By 'play again' I mean 'carry on playing', and by 'actually want to' I mean 'have been surprised by and should ignore the fact that I groan when I come across the words point and click because there are now many more games I should'.
That's a long-winded way of saying that even with the ease of having a remastered version on two platforms, I still somewhat hesitated to get around to playing yet another LucasArts point and click adventure game, in the form of Grim Fandango.
I hesitated not because of the cast of characters who are nothing but skeletons and monsters, but because I didn't want to get frustrated by getting stumped on a puzzle, of which there seem to be many in this genre.
Despite the developers constantly saying that there are no fail states, and no ways to lose, I'm never filled with enough confidence to get stuck in and find out, frankly, what I'm missing. Because I've clearly been missing the likes of Grim Fandango.
Hey! Come here! We're going to play a space shooter! I know! Another one!
It is 2520 or so, and the world hasn't just gone to hell but has gone from the Universe. The only survivors are a bunch of space pilots and their robot, and they're not going out without a fight. This is Radiant Silvergun, a shooter that was said to have been released at the wrong time but has also been said to have been released at just the right time, to remind arcade players that the space shooter is alive and well.
"Cars slide, drift, bounce and skid with frightening realism."
When I found out that Gran Turismo isn't the only simulator out there, I wondered just what else could have been competing with the driving juggernaut. Nothing in my childhood came close to Gran Turismo, and my mind is drawing a blank at even naming more modern challengers. The Forza series, I suppose. Project Cars? But those are decades away. What was out in the late 1990s that did racing simulation as detailed as Gran Turismo?
As it turns out, it's a title I'd never know because I was a ten-year-old console peasant at the time. As in I was 10, not my console library. It wasn't even a library, I only had the PlayStation and the Game Boy and I'm off topic here.
For PC gamers, especially for fans of the motor-racing of the late 1960s, there was a simulator not to be missed, and it was simply titled Grand Prix Legends.
Dropping you into the 1967 Formula One season, you get to duke it out around Monaco, Silverstone and the Nürburgring against Jim Clark, Jack Brabham, Graham Hill and even more drivers you've never heard of unless you've an interest in the history of F1. The cars are engines with wheels, the safety standards are worryingly low and the noise of the engines is deafening. This is going to be fun.
What games have I played in my library for more than two hours, but haven't played at all in a long time since? Well, Steam suggested this lot as part of its 'Nostalgia' category.
There are a fair few games to avoid for the moment from these suggestions. The Call of Duty entries will have their moment to shine in their 1001 posts, as will the likes of FlatOut and Football Manager. Some have already been played, including The 7th Guest and Star Wars: TIE Fighter, and I'm in no rush to go back to either. From what remains, one title did jump out, now that I'm more into my tabletop gaming, and that was Card Hunter.
In it, you play against Gamesmaster Gary in a game where the combat encounters of Dungeons & Dragons are played with handfuls of cards and unseen dice rolls.
I've actually reviewed it before, a long time ago, for BasedGamer, which now points to a site that definitely isn't about user-created game reviews, as was its intention. In that review, I eventually got to the point where I liked it, but it had its problems. Read on to find out what I meant.
Sometimes - so I've heard - players get a game and simply can't wait to play it, doing so at the earliest opportunity. The 'Can't Wait' category is a little flexible in the definition of 'earliest opportunity', giving me a random selection of titles that I've bought in the last six months, and could do with playing.
Some unexpected titles in this bunch. I can't even be sure I own them, which must mean many of them came in bundles. I've played a lot of the Pathfinder Adventures game, so that's an instantly avoided one. Thought I bought it earlier, but evidently not. Firewatch has been completed too, so there's no need to hop into that, though I would like a second playthrough to approach the story differently. I've forgotten how I approached it the first time around, though, so that might be tricky.
Of the leftovers, Passpertout was a frontrunner for allowing you to pass yourself off as an artist selling crap on the streets, but it was Jalopy that won out, the car repair and road trip simulator.
Mixed reviews in recent days, but it was in the last Humble Monthly Bundle, so it's fresh enough for a 'Can't Wait', I think.
