Konjak aka Joakim Sandberg has worked as an animator on many great games at WayForward, but has also created a few successful solo projects. Let’s look at one of his earliest works first.
Game club this month took a look at one from Mitchell Wolfe’s childhood, the first Pajama Sam game from Humongous. Not being familiar with adventure games, this was a good introduction to the genre and especially the specific oeuvre of Ron Gilbert.
I’ve started playing all the Avatar games. As I’ve said before, the first round released for Book 1 have an original story set after Book 1. The PC version is the one exception. It has 6 chapters based on episodes in the first season. The game itself is obviously cheaply made and not very good, but I want to talk more about its content because it’s not widely acknowledged. By documenting it more thoroughly I can perhaps save you from playing it but still bring it to light.
Apart from the show’s animated intro as an opening cutscene, you’re dumped straight into The Kyoshi Warriors, episode 1x04. The main gameplay is a simplistic Diablo-like clickathon; you’ve got 3D models, isometric view, painted backgrounds, and mouse-only controls. Each of the clicks has three skills which are unlocked through the plot: attacks on left, and on the right are the air scooter for mobility, an air shield, and a mist technique to hide from enemies. Other gameplay modes are inserted between small arenas of this type. In the first chapter we see the meditation minigame (click the distracting thoughts to keep Aang’s mind clear) and an Appa-based flying shoot-em-up.
We move on to 1x05, The King of Omashu. The game is fully voiced, with all the actors reprising their roles for the cutscenes, an abridged mix of slightly rejigged lines and new dialogue that gets the same points across as the show. The lunchbox key test has been replaced by fighting a bunch of hog monkeys, and the Flopsy test shows a new “chase” gameplay style which controls like the Appa stages but just avoiding obstacles. Then there’s a one-on-one battle with Bumi, which has the standard controls but feels different due to duelling single opponents with a range of skills. The difficulty is very forgiving; if you run out of health you instantly respawn and enemy are not reset. The other modes are bit less lenient but still easy.
The Scar of the World, as the manual calls it, is 1x7 The Winter Solstice part 1. After an Appa stage against a new kind of bird (”spine hawks”), you fight out-of-place canyon crawlers and later the also-new tiger bees/wasps. The new creatures are a great part of this game to me. The Avatar world has lots of interesting hybrid animals so seeing brand new ones for this game was really fun, such as the boar-coons in the Kyoshi stage. There’s a Heibai chase and another meditation here, but also a nice story moment that’s not in the show; meeting repentant Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom soldiers who regret their actions destroying the forest in the name of war and industry. The fight with Heibai requires the use of the dedicated Avatar State button on the interface, which is used only the once.
Part 2 of the Winter Solstice is the basis for chapter 4, The Crescent Isle. Just like the show there are scenes with Zuko and Iroh, mostly just repeating lines from the show. The Appa level that starts this chapter is not tacked-on like the others feel, as it recreates (poorly) the desperate flight through a Fire Navy bombardment. It was in this level I discovered the tactic of using the air scooter to skip right past all the bad guys to the next cutscene trigger instead of tediously fighting them; the game’s controls and hit detection are very unsatisfactory. Amusingly, the temple is stacked with Fire Sages, rather than there just being 5.
Chapter 5 is mainly based on 1x13, The Blue Spirit, although I was pleased to see it enriching its presentation with elements of 1x09 The Waterbending Scroll (pirates to fight, and the scroll teaches Aang a new move) and 1x15 Bato of the Water Tribe (Bato shows up for exposition). Sokka and Katara sometimes accompany you, throwing boomerangs and water whips, to help with fighting sections. But both they and the enemies often just wander around or lag behind, so it’s not very dynamic. The stealth section is very tedious but at least the new “croco beasts” in the swamp gave something to look at. The “scoot past all enemies” technique helped again to escape the Pohuai stronghold.
The final chapter adapts the last three episodes of Book 1. You fight some “frostbats” on Appa, then a duel with Pakku, infiltrating Zhao’s ship, a duel with the chain hammer guy, meditation in the spirit oasis (no Spirit World level unfortunately), and finally an epic beatdown as the ocean spirit (which in fact looks and plays pretty poorly, as does most of the game).
It’s too bad the game is not very fun, because it does have its commendable features. Being the only Book 1 adaptation (apart from the movie tie-in games) gives you the opportunity to play favourite moments from the show, and the few new plot elements and new creatures are worthwhile for fans. It also has some nicely drawn backgrounds, but just as many bland or muddy ones. It tries to vary the gameplay but each mode is pretty lousy. Finally, there is a section of the credits devoted to showcasing concept art for the project that could be of interest to fans. It’s baked into the credits movie so I’ve captured the video of it which you can watch here. So, now you don’t have to play this game. Unless you want to, of course.
I’ve just finished another rewatch of the whole series of Daria. The two related books being hard to come by, and not owning a compatible GPS for the navigation voice thing, I checked out the other significant piece of spin-off material, this PC adventure game from 2000.
Daria’s Inferno does a fair job recreating the look of the show with appearances by many characters, all of whom are voiced by the show’s actors. The script is also authentic, with a writer of several episodes doing the honours. As a source of many new sarcastic quips, the game pretty much aces it. Not to mention new alter egos in the credits, which also features the full version of the theme song with extra verses.
Unfortunately the game can’t just be fan-pleasing, it has to deliver a compelling game experience, which is where it falls down. The game is a series of fetch quests, with dodgy pathing and hit detection from roaming mooks. You’re required to constantly click on wandering characters with a particular item, and if they touch you a few times you have to start the room again. This means getting kicked back to the room select screen and listening to the same sound bites again and again, which is the dark side of having the characters make amusing comments. The game likes putting you in maze-like areas where you have to find the right way by trial and error, and pick up items while being harassed by wandering irritants. It’s just not that fun.
Mercifully the game is short, and it’s worth struggling through the mediocre gameplay to hear what Daria has to say about all the objects she finds and the situation her dream puts her in. Yes, canon snobs: this game was all a dream, much like “Murder, She Snored”. It’s an elegant device for the purposes of the game, and it’s fun to see Mr. DeMartino’s classroom reimagined as a torture dungeon, as it is to walk around Daria’s oddly expansive house, or explore seldom-seen locations like Dega Street. And don’t forget to check for hints on every screen, as they take the form of little Sick, Sad World clips.
So while the art may look amateurish at points and the gameplay is more of a chore than a selling point, the Daria-ness of it all leads me to recommend it to fans as a sort of “lost episode”. As long as you can get it running, and I leave that part up to you; I used Virtualbox and a copy of Windows XP, but still encountered frequent crashes. Now, this is my stop. Got to get off. I may go pop. Excuse me.
PS. I just learned from reading the manual that you can use the arrow keys to move. That might have been easier in certain parts.
Portal was a surprising classic. Does the sequel justify its existence? Yeah, probably.
Portal’s appeal was its innovative first-person puzzling, as well as the atmospheric setting and the humour of being tormented throughout the game (although Gruntilda did that in Banjo-Kazooie years before). Portal 2 ramps up the plot elements with more characters and twists, as well as delving into the history of Aperture in some very impressive dilapidated settings. I feel that the puzzles don’t quite have the same feeling of build-up or the difficulty of the first game’s later test chambers, partially due to being somewhat overloaded with new gimmicks, with the gels and whatnot.
Still, it’s nice to have those fresh elements as well as the very well-executed feeling of progression with the frequent plot events. You’ve got Wheatley, his takeover of the facility, going underground to abandoned facilities, the joining up with potato GLaDOS, the progressive Cave Johnson time capsules, and the re-establishment of GLaDOS and Chell’s escape. Sorry, did I spoil it? Why are you reading this?
Anyway all that stuff is great, and the voiceover characters with their distinct personalities spice it up with different kinds of humour (even if GLaDOS is a bit neutered in potato form). I couldn’t figure out how to find the Cave Johnson plot stuff in the Perpetual Testing Initiative, but never mind.
Basically the game builds on Portal in most ways to deliver a very satisfying sequel. The puzzles are quite good, the atmosphere is top-notch. There’s nifty sound design touches (despite some audio glitches on the Mac version… grump), and a sweet new song at the end. Plus I don’t think they mention cake even once, they just introduce new memes that got overused. Yay!
I played this a little out of order. By which I mean the co-op segment, which is a fantastic addition, should come after you’ve done the single player, but I did it a few years ago with my brother. Great times. But don’t neglect it, if you can. The puzzles there really do test you, the teamwork element twisting your brain in all new exciting ways. From what I remember.
What Portal 2 proves is that Valve has still got it (as of 4 years ago, anyway). They really do know how to make a killer game. It’s just too bad they’re stuck on marketplaces, gimmicky tech vaporware, and DOTA 2, of all things. Yeesh. Still, very positive feelings for this game. Accessible, fun, and funny.
Here goes. My goal for the start of this year is to play through all the Rayman games. After each main entry, I’ll play the handheld iterations that took inspiration from it. So we start with the original Rayman. There are many ports and versions of the game, with many subtle differences. I hear the Jaguar version is especially different. However, the DOS version is the most easily accessible from gog.com. In hindsight, maybe I should have tried the DSi version which attempts to ease up the difficulty by giving you more health and such.
Oh, this game. One of the few that I’ve simply given up on due to sheer difficulty. Normally I like a bit of challenge or can persevere if I’m enjoying the game. In this case, my enjoyment was low due to the slow, plodding nature (as well as slow progression with upgrades… I hadn’t even got the helicopter hair when I stopped) and the “European platformer” style maze-like levels with little direction. So when the game is so unforgiving and the deaths so unfair, I blamed the game’s design. Although you get 9 continues (which might as well just be more lives, since they put you at the most recent checkpoint anyway) the lives run out quickly. The sheer length of the levels exacerbates the problem as you must start the whole gauntlet again upon game over, and if you saved with only a few continues left, well too bad.
After rage quitting, I found out some interesting tidbits. The Rayman Pirate Community’s wiki, an excellent information source claims that Rayman 1 was not playtested for difficulty, and I believe it. By watching a speedrunner I also felt vindicated that I would never pull off the superhuman feats of reflexes and memory that he possessed. I also learned that to get to the final boss, Mr Dark, you must find each and every Electoon cage in all their fiendish hiding spots. What a joke!
So I really can’t recommend Rayman 1. Up until Origins, it seemed valid to ignore it since much of what it established was seemingly retconned by subsequent games. Origins though brings back a surprising amount from this one, with the fairies, the antagonist, the earned abilities, the drone enemies, the environments. The confrontation with Bad Rayman, a cool idea, is also recycled for Legends. So I’d recommend watching Spikevegeta’s speedrun of the game instead of playing it yourself (or rather, it playing you like a mangled xylophone).
Just a few more quick observations, because the difficulty wasn’t my only problem here. The powerup system is obscured from the player; there’s two kinds of fist powerups, but you don’t get an indication of which you have, and you lose them when you die or get hit or something? The “winding up the fist” thing is never useful because it takes too long and doesn’t go far enough. Your Ting count is reset when you die, so you’ll never get 100 for an extra life. The music varies between dull and moody, but no tunes stand out. The backgrounds are vibrant but sometimes obscure important gameplay details. Finally, while the sprites are large and have nice animation, this means the viewing area of the screen is too small and so threats can jump out at you.
It really pains me to have to put down a game. But you have to know when to walk away, and I wouldn’t let Rayman continue to abuse me. I still love him though, and have hope for his next incarnation to treat me better. So I’m moving on to Rayman 1’s little brother on the Game Boy Color. I won’t be covering any of the many, many educational games based on Rayman 1. You can play those yourself and maybe learn some French/English/Maths/etc.
Here’s a nice one. At Christmas I found the time to play through a whole game in co-op with my bro, on his PC. And what a good choice for it! Short and sweet.
Guacamelee is basically a Lucha/Latin-themed Metroidvania-style affair, with great progression, really cool areas and art design, a physical combat focus but still really well done exploration, funny and deep characters, challenging platforming, fun secrets and upgrades, and yep it’s good. There’s so much to love.
Stay away from the keyboard though! Poor bro was forced to use it because I claimed the USB controller, and had a hell of a time. Like Super Meat Boy, the gamepad is the way to go.
Having fun in co-op gameplay can excuse a lot of flaws in a game, so I can’t say with certainty what faults this game may have. Some parts may have dragged and there may have been more frustration with the challenging parts in solo, but it’s more bearable with two. We didn’t use alternate skins very much because their benefits weren’t obvious, but in the extra challenge bits at the end we used their specialised properties at times. Also the music got annoying but we did play it in marathon essentially, it was good for a while.
I’ve heard complaints about the overuse of meme humour and references, but this is just in posters in the towns, it’s no big deal. It’s smooth and fast-paced, with plenty of techniques for traversal to keep it engaging, as well as pretty deep combat for when that comes up. It evokes old-school charm while also being modern and slick. It’s just such a polished experience, made with so much love. It’s a perfect example of an indie hit. I think I can leave it at that, because I don’t know what I can say—like many great indie games, I wasn’t convinced about it until I played it. And like many great co-op games, the real draw is the shared experience with loved ones, but this is an excellent game to have those experiences with.
One day I’m going to include at least one screenshot or image in these reviews, but this is not that day! Ok fine, here:
Trials Evolution is the sequel to the cool motorbike with cryptic hidden secrets game, Trials 2. As far as I currently know, Evolution doesn’t have weird hidden clues but it does have multiplayer. I’ve heard it’s good and it’s kind of a posterboy for XBLA, but it’s also on the (much better) Steam platform. Now, I can’t normally play this game as 1) my computer kinda sucks and 2) it’s not Mac-compatible. But lucky for me, I have a cool family.
So I actually played this game while visiting my family back in my home town. My little brother, this blog’s #1 fan, is a huge PC gamer. I guess you could say that after our childhood playing Nintendo consoles and PC games, he took one path and I the other. The PC is his only gaming device, his phone is even still a monochrome brick. Last year he managed to ditch the aging shared family computer and built his dream gaming rig. As such, many games on the old Steam catalogue that had been purchased and waiting were finally able to be downloaded and played. I’ve enjoyed watching some of these while on visits, such as Europa Universalis 3, Serious Sam, Just Cause 2, and lots of others too, including Minecraft and League of Legends.
But enough about his gaming habits. Often I’m content to watch him play games that I would normally never pick up, but occasionally we’re able to play co-op or take turns. This game supports both, which was much easier due to the wired controller he also picked up at Christmas (he’s been known to emulate Smash Bros 64 and fit 3 guys on one keyboard).
For those who are unfamiliar, the game is an extension of many older games that used the concept of a bike and a reliable physics simulation to pull off tricks and stuff, whether for racing, doing sweet jumps, or exploring a strangely-deisgned level. A few that I’ve played are Bike or Die on the Palm Pilot (exploration) or the more recent Mad Skill Motocross (racing). Trials has elements of the spectrum of these games, especially with the user-created content which can cater to different tastes. Obviously, being a modern game, it does it with sweet graphics and 2.5D presentation (2D play in a 3D world, sometimes with curving tracks etc).
My experience with this, as with those other games, was really fun until the difficulty starts to ramp up, and it gets to be a pretty steep ramp (the game also features literal steep ramps), at which point it becomes very frustrating and you need a break. Having the co-op experience and egging each other on really enhanced it though, whether in direct competition or taking turns.
I could say that there’s maybe not enough multiplayer tracks and content, as we seemed to get through most of it quickly before resorting to the taking turns in single mode, which wasn’t as fun an experience, even if the levels themselves were more varied in that mode. The “challenge” levels were a highlight as they used and abused the mechanics of the game to get you to do some wacky stuff, but the straight biking race challenges which often involved traversing obstacles were very solid.
I’m kinda rambling; the game was lots of fun, but when we tried to explore some of the user-made tracks it got complicated, as we seemed to keep coming up with excruciatingly difficult levels. Apparently you can find some amazing stuff in there though, but I dunno. I wasn’t sold on buying the game myself (even if I had the means to play it) because it seemed to reach that frustration level too quickly, which would likely be even worse when playing by yourself.
I suppose if you found some levels that really suited you, you could have tons of fun replaying them with friends. I tend to like completing content, and moving on to other content but we did replay some tracks and just the act of getting through the track, and bailing before the finish line to try and cross just in front of the other person was a really great experience.
I have on more big nit to pick: for some reason, at a certain point in tracks (we theorised it was when the finish line was “in sight” or one checkpoint away or something), if you crashed you wouldn’t respawn and you got a DNF while the other person kept going. I suppose that’s fair enough, but on the really hard levels when it took ten or fifteen tries to clear an obstacle, it meant we slowly got through most of a track but because of the final or even second-final obstacle were never able to cross the finish line, which to some extent invalidated the progress. The point system could have been tweaked or tweakable in this regard too. That brings up that in a game where users can create tracks with such detailed tools, the gameplay itself wasn’t very customisable. Just a niggling point.
The main thing is that the game just allowed me to have a really fun experience shared with my brother. For that I love it dearly and give it twelve ragdolls gyrating through the floor geometry. Some games can be used as a means to facilitate human social interaction or experiences or relationships; yeah anyway that’s gaming theory from Milo right there. Before I overthink it too much, I’ll bail and flail.
Trials Evolution is the sequel to the cool motorbike with cryptic hidden secrets game, Trials 2. As far as I currently know, Evolution doesn’t have weird hidden clues but it does have multiplayer. I’ve heard it’s good and it’s kind of a posterboy for XBLA, but it’s also on the (much better) Steam platform. Now, I can’t normally play this game as 1) my computer kinda sucks and 2) it’s not Mac-compatible. But lucky for me, I have a cool family.
