Ghost Chaser

For some, it's an obscure title from way back, for others; it's an obscure but fun title from way back. Ghostchaser. The premise is simple enough and quite amusing even for a C64 game. There's a shitload of treasure in a house, way way down in the basement, but it's haunted and if you try to go and get it, you could die!

It's not going to win the prize for best written plot, but at least it has one and there's rules to go with dying. For a start, you can touch anything 3 times within any room and then you'll die, be it spooks, small ghosts or water drops. Even the Big Ghost that can randomly turn up and patrol the rooms can be touched up to 3 times within a room. If you leave the room and come back in immediately again, it's back to be touched up three times and then dying. Not exactly the Jimmy Saville approach but it's close enough.

Your character, the wonderfully nicknamed Twatz McGibbons, who decides with his apparently receding hair-line, to brave the mystery of the haunted house (and from the outside it's JUST a house but becomes the fucking Tardis on the inside). Armed with what can only be described as balls, will be able to shoot his balls at the Big Ghost and scare it off temporarily, while the smaller ghosts will ignore that shit and continue to try and kill you anyway.

Falling too far will kill you, falling through the floor will kill you, being hit by the crusher will hit you (A one off trap) or touching any spook/ghost three times within any single room, will kill you. The problem with this 3 hit rule is that when you're hit you're forced to watch Twatty-Boy shake back and forth from the "shock" and all control of the character is frozen. This means if the ghost or spook is STILL touching you by the time it wears off, you’re getting hit AGAIN.

When it happens the 3rd time, you're angry enough to rip the game's bollocks off with your teeth before you start the room again and await to have to do the same dance again. The unfair-frustration level is quite well established here on this one. But, I hear you say "why should I give a shit?" and instead I'm translating that as "How can I defend myself?" which leads me more nicely into the next point, that you can run, jump, dunk, shimmy and shoot balls at Big Ghost.

But therein lays the problem, the controls. Up is jump/climb, left is left, right is right and down is duck or climb down a ladder. Shooting requires you to hold still, then press the fire button and THEN in the direction (1 of 4) you wish to send your balls flying. So shooting left, will send you slightly to the left as you WALK that way. The same with moving right and shooting downwards will invariably make you duck.

Now, for a bonus point and a slice of Bod's patented "State the fucking obvious" pie, what is going to happen when you shoot upwards? Yep that's right, you JUMP. A slice of pie for you and a big hearty... heart attack for being a smart-arse. Yes, you jump upwards on an upwards shot, which is NOT helpful when trying to avoid a plethora of slow moving enemies that could be coming from all manner of directions.

But while you scout every room in the house from the Kitchen, to the Greenhouse (in the upstairs rooms... the fuck?) to the Bathroom, Bedrooms and more. Find the key to get into the painting with the "watching you" eyes and then into the bowels of the under-house where the architecture and graphics begin to really represent a deep, dank and uninviting place (not where Berk lives, that's Trapdoor, another dank and uninviting place), where the number of spooks increases, you'll find graves, wine cellars and more deadly traps on your search for the large treasure (immediately followed by the 'GAME OVER' as if you lost... maybe you have? Ooh the mind fuck!) and take on the Big Ghost while he steadily haunts you for trying to take (assumedly) his treasure.

Musically, there's the little haunting melody at the start of the game, and then silence throughout from the orchestra. Probably watching you fuck up that one small jump at the start of the 2nd room a few times and giggling their philharmonic balls off at you. All you get are shuffling footstep noises, sliding sine-waves of jumping screams and the high-pitched "you dropped a bollock" squeal each time you get hit. Now, I could argue "Hey 1984! We should be happy with Twatz McGibbons here in all his bald-headed glory!" but I won't. I'm not helping that out at all.

There's some slight replayability in the game but ultimately, there's one ending, the same rooms in the house no matter what with the same ways of beating them, the same traps in the same place and the same effortless ending. Ghostchaser this game might be, but you'll want to run the fuck away from it after the first play through.

BALLS.

Minecraft

(Note: Ignoring the use of mods in this review as the near unlimited potential they bring would result in this review being a tome of impossible proportions. Go get the mods yourself and test them you lazy gits)

Cast your mind back up to 100 years ago, maybe a little bit longer and recall if you can of an innocent time, a time of putting brightly coloured bricks together on top of each other and seeing your imagined construct in the worst possible combination of bricks and pieces and claiming "it's a gun" when it looks more like the mutual union of a cow and pig, in the same way that cars crashing together at 100mph can be considered a "union" of cars. That was Lego, you made most of it and your imagination took the rest of it to higher levels of realisation for you, just you, and certainly not anyone else that saw what you'd made.

Minecraft is effectively, a 3D world of Lego with some extras tacked on such as having to go out and dig up your Lego bricks, combining different bricks together to make more things and killing things to get their bricks and such. Though I'm really underselling this one on an overly tortured metaphor that should have been put to rest after the first sentence, instead of trailing on for another 2 paragraphs.

For a definition of the game, try "Wide Open Sandbox Game" with the words "Wide Open" being wider and open than the legs of the Whore of Babylon. This game is huge, potentially. You're given the basic tour of duty in a tutorial (if you want it) before a world is generated around your starting point (or a specific amount of world on platforms where the memory size of the game is a limitation. From here you're expected to begin a life of collection blocks from various biomes (grass, mushroom, desert etc) and combine them in inventive ways to be able to go on and develop better blocks, weapons, tools and engineering machinery to be able to continue living in the world that generates while you move around.

The game's scope is enormous, reaching in size to be whatever the available hard disk is on PCs and in some cases has been calculated to be 5-6 times bigger than the Earth, you'll never be running short on the basic blocks. Where in you can find and locate all manner of blocks from wood to earth, rocks and stone to lava, rare metals and precious stones all of which lead to the crafting and manufacturing of swords, armour, picks, shovels, explosives, hoes, ladders, rail tracks, cakes, and a whole plethora of other things involved in ways that most people will likely ignore. But that's all depending upon how the player wishes to play.

You could be the intrepid explorer digging through caves and valleys, seeking underground lost civilisations and looting them (Whether It Belongs In A Museum or not) you could become a farmer of crops or livestock, managing your various animals and breeding them together to farm them for meat, leather, wool and so on. Create huge monuments for yourself (Most people go for a castle since it involves a lot of rocks and not much else, but then again the giant erupting golden breast mountain with lava sounds appealing, next to another one of the same size just to REALLY make other players sit up and take notice). Create monorails of train tracks with functional switching stations using the railroad blocks and plenty more.

You could also just run around killing monsters and get to the point of killing the "Boss" known as the Enderdragon and "beating" the game before returning to the world to continue being whatever it was you were being in the first place.

This huge scope is also the game's downfall depending upon the player. You NEED to set yourself a goal and make your own way towards it, you cannot rely on the game for it as it's about as open a world you can imagine in that YOU and YOUR actions are the ONLY guiding forces in the game (Until some prick joins the game and blows up your pixel-art of Custer's Last Stand, pervert), so the limit of the game aside from the various obstacles in the way, are your own imagination and understanding.

You could even build electrical circuits using Binary Logic for gates and from there (in theory at least, I've not seen it myself) build far more complicated structures up to basic rudimentary computer processors. Taking a look around other games and maps, it's possible to see some people making reproductions of famous land marks, spaceships from sci-fi films and shows in full detail, faithful reproductions of various vehicles made from plans and schematics. Some people even go so far as to build "Adventures" for others to engage in that sets up some of the more hazardous problems in the game for players to navigate, much akin to the Raiders of the Lost Ark introduction sequence.

It's entirely down to the player to decide what their objective is, how they wish to go about it and what they intend to do once they've done it. For your standard player that's hooked on FPS where you absolutely must run from A to B, stare at some special effects and then beat the level, this game is not likely to appeal to that player. This game is definitely one for those that like to be more creative, for those that enjoy seeing something tested and performed and then ultimately, succeed, before using it in a more creative fashion (fully functional drawbridges, pumping stations that generate blocks etc) budding construction artists or those seeking the idea of doing something nobody else has done before.

Before you realise it, or if you watch someone else and particularly the younger players at that, they'll be setting up rudimentary scaffolding around the structure they're creating because if they fall off whatever they're building at the time, they'll pancake on the ground, so now they're thinking along multiple lines of whether or not to build something, how to stay alive while building and the last challenge, how to get back down again without biting the big one. (Assuming of course they're not in creative mode and just fly back down again).

It's fun, it's huge, it's not going to appeal to everyone and there'll be a clear divide between the two that will play this and those that vehemently refuse to do so.

Gradius

Keeping on the theme of the scrolling shooter space-em-up, I'm taking a pickaxe to the next game and mining my way through the craft of game design. Yep, I'm talking about Gradius (Nemesis in some locations). A game which was splurged out in 1985 and brought to the fore, a series of games that would later become parodies of itself in games like Parodius. Which is basically this game with a cheeky look in its eye.

But before a take enough tangents to the curve to come back around on myself, I'll remain focus upon this game for now. You fly ship, ship shooty things, kill things to get power ups, use power-ups, avoid dying, shooty time for big bosses, beat level and prepare to play it again in a different setting. I'm not exactly selling this thing but then again, there's no real plot to this one. (in the game at least, but who really reads manuals? I stopped bothering around the time of Duke Nukem 3D wherein the plot was "aliens invaded, go kick ass". Kind of pointless and not an acceptable medium of delivering a storyline. Do you go to watch a film but have someone tell you the story just before watching it? If so I feel very sorry for you, incidentally do NOT come to the movies with me you oddball)

But what is it about Gradius that makes it particularly poignant that I would write a review about it? Quite a lot to be honest. The graphics are crisp and colourful without being over the top; the music is optimistically upbeat to the point that if it got any more cheerful people's legs would be falling off. It's cute and lively, largely inoffensive and the difficulty ramps up rather naughtily in the background while you're left to admire the cute game for what it is. A rather challenging little number from Konami that does require your dexterity and reflexes if you want to survive it.

The game play was fairly unique at the time. You've 3 buttons of control here, shooting, power up deployment and bombs (most ports of the game decided to amalgamate the shot and bomb button into one, making for a slightly easier game.) No charging of shots here (See R-Type review), just tap it to shoot and tap it quickly to shoot quickly.

Every time you kill a red-ish enemy, or the whole set of type of enemies, you'll be granted a power-up (if you fly into it) where you'll be able to incrementally move across the power-up list at the bottom of the screen. Once you've got the power-up highlighted that you want, you can active it and hey-presto! You’ve got the power-up. The power-ups come arranged in order of Speed Up (too many and you'll just crash into something because your feeble mind cannot comprehend the pixels and speed) Missiles (runs along the ground fucking shit up) Double Shot (your ability to shoot up and forwards to fuck shit up) Laser (fucks a lot of shit up) Option (give you an orb that does EXACTLY what your ship can do in order to fuck shit up by the multiple) and Shield (Which lets you survive having your shit fucked up).

There are some drawbacks, for a start, each power-up you select, resets your power-up count. So collect 2 and opt for missiles, and you're back to having zero in stock. Lasers and Doubles cannot be used together, one or the other only here. The shield will only take 3 or so hits before it fades and that's assuming you're not hit by something that will completely disregard you have a shield and just blast you into nothingness with a rather disappointing sound effect. This of course means, back to square one with no power-ups and no speed.

The first boss, of the first level (naturally, but bear with me here) is a large spaceship that requires you to shoot out the core to kill it. The second boss is a large spaceship that requires you to shoot out the core to kill it. The third boss is a large spaceship that requires you to shoot out the core to kill it... Noticing a pattern? No, I'm not messing about; the first 5 bosses in the game are the same large spaceship! Now the differences before the battle are the sub-bosses which can be active volcanoes, rushed by hundreds of small enemies, tentacle monsters and such. It's not until you get to level 6 and 7 that the bosses change into something more synonymous with the level itself and of course, the 7th boss is the final boss.

It does make you wonder why they didn't have different bosses? When they manage it on the Gameboy version!

It's worth a play however, if only to see what the game series was spawned from with regards to such mechanics in game play. Aside from that you might fair a lot better if you went with the games ported to other formats and sequels where Konami began to up their game.

Or you could fight the same boss five times.

R-Type

Continuing with the theme of shooters, from last review, this time I thought I'd carry on with the scrolling shoot-em-ups and tackle something a little more recognised in the gaming world. Let's see if you can guess it before I finish this para-RTYPE-graph, no? You failed and I never said I was going to play fairly either.

R-Type was released in arcades back in July 1987, and eventually ported to almost every possible platform imaginable ranging from the ZX Spectrum up to modern day remakes on the Xbox Live Arcade delivery platform, R-Type was a different model of game compared to the 1985 release of Gradius (another side scrolling shooty space shippy game, which will be reviewed later).

Taking the rather simple idea of Spaceship on the left, moving right, shoot everything that moves and some things that don't move, kill boss, cheer and look embarrassed when the bigger people look over at you playing the arcade, rinse and repeat method. R-Type added a few things that most games up to that point hadn't really done, the most iconic of which were the charge shot and the "force" pod. The charge shot being where you held the fire button, charged up a large shot and released a big blast of sprite-damage towards your enemies and often took out most of them, and some of the bigger ones as well, in one go. While the Force pod was the indestructible (not always impenetrable) shield/weapon add-on that could be affixed to the front of the ship, the rear of the ship to shoot backwards, or launched off to cause remote damage to enemies.

This alone led to many different ways of playing the game and forcing people to play the game. Weapons themselves could be from bouncing lasers, spiralling helix-style lasers, floor and ceiling sweeping flame throwers and additional pods for protection and firepower that would hover above and below the player's craft, to the missiles and bombs that would drop automatically when firing. The dynamics meant that there's multiple ways to attack the enemies and some of course would be better than others, depending upon the level and the deviousness of the designers.

Yes you will die. Yes you will have to learn and pumping in credits is NO cure as you're moved back to various start/checkpoints rather than just going straight back in where you died. Oh and all your power ups are GONE. Which is a real bitch as the first weapon power up gives you the Force pod with no powers, regardless of the situation and subsequent pods deliver the build up of firepower for the respective different weapon types.

And you're as slow as a snail on dope, again.

Game mechanics aside, the game itself is a tough one, often unrelenting in its aggressive nature and brutally punishing when under-powered or incorrectly powered for the level. Flame walls might be a great attack for those enemies on the ceiling and floors, but it's not going to do shit against the airborne enemies flying towards you. While the Helix laser will brutally slaughter airborne enemies, strafing runs against the ceiling and floor enemies will be a task. The bounce laser might be the middle-ground here but it's woefully lacking in power compared to either of the other 2 main weapons.

The other key issue with the mechanics as far as a game play issue goes, is that while firing rapidly, you cannot charge your blast-shot and while charging your blast-shot, you might have to release it early in order to fire the rapid shots again. So another faux-difficulty/dynamic of the game presented to you early on, with just the right amount of insufficient time to get used to it fully before you bite the big one and start over.

But we can't ignore that these things made cash and money, and making your game easy wasn't the way to winning the coinage back then. Or these days either. Though the idea does come to mind to make all arcades free play and give people time limits within the arcades. £10 gives you an hour... coloured wristbands for players just like in swimming pools that allocate time limits... Might be an idea there...

Music wise, the game has its catchy moments, particular for the boss battles (assuming you survive long enough) where you get to hear the same few bars of composition repeated until you either kill the boss or it kills you/disappears. Take too long on a boss and it'll either sod off or will leave the arena, usually by going through you slowly. But it's catchy enough to be memorable which is more than can be said for quite a LOT of arcade game bosses and such, certainly putting on a slightly higher level than most arcades which are often forgettable even after years of playing them.

Having said that, the game does look impressive for 1987 (same year as double dragon, operation wolf, actually a rather good year for arcades), each level fitting a theme from space-industrial, natural caves, biomechanical and such, all done extremely well given the graphical limitations of the time and the enemies themed and crafted with such detail that it feels like playing levels from various games. Which in a way isn't great as the levels have no real cohesion aside from "These things are trying to kill you, go fuck them up" with your potentially adequately powered spaceship. Or at least your amazing skills of getting-the-fuck-out-of-the-way.

It's a fun game if you've the time and patience, but that often comes with a steady learning curve at the cost of cash. Or a good emulator.

Hades Nebula

Once again, I take another look back to the older days, the days before Xbox 360s and PS3's (Yeah I know Xbox ONE and PS4 but honestly, not really giving a fuck there about the new stuff until it's made AFFORDABLE, I do not consider consoles costing over several hundred pounds to be worth my money, especially when other consoles still offer great games that are enjoyable, you know what, bollocks, I'm getting the Commodore 64 out again.)

Right, starting over, C64 time and a look at one of the first bullet-hell space shooters that I can remember from my childhood. Hades Nebula, apparently there's some sort of plot but given I only had the cassette (If you have to look up what that is, you're too young for this), and no manual. But that never stopped a kid from enjoying a game... unless it was Elite or Valhalla, then you had a few things to look up.

Oh and don't forget young 'un's, no international computer system was readily available for people to use until 1994, so no way to look up guides unless a) you bought one or b) you read one in a magazine. This game arrived on the gaming scene in 1987 and so you're a long way from home and the internet. Enjoy your cold, disconnected, solo experiences. (Unless of course you like that, in which case, just enjoy!).

Hades Nebula is your vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, featuring a rather plucky little one-hit-wonder spaceship, piloted by captain OnlyShootsForwards (Maiden name...), who of course is the very last defence against the giant ass-hat that is the Hades Emperor. Which always makes me wonder, why didn't they send Captain ShootyShip out first and have him wipe out most of the known enemy, as the player YOU'RE certainly more than capable of doing it.

Armed with a basic laser/bullet, you'll have to contend with veritable armadas of enemies, waves of opponents spawning and shooting at you while others will phase into existence and try to crash into your ship, or at the very least, prevent you from running backwards - which will kill you fairly quickly when you can't move out the way of new enemies coming in from the top of the screen. Before shooting the hell out of the occasional boss and then arriving at the biggest ship with the biggest number of guns and blasters etc, the much sought after, Final Boss.

Game play wise is very simple, the joystick moves the ship while the scrolling maintains a constant speed through levels, and enemies will spawn in at pre-determined places but in random spots. So just after the first level, you WILL fight your first wave of the skull-faced homing enemies but where they turn up on the screen, is randomly allocated within the code. As are all the waves of enemies, so each wave itself is specifically determined as to WHEN it turns up, just not WHERE on the screen. Randomisation does help replay-ability, ask any rogue-like dungeon player.

You do have some hope however, across the 15 levels and bosses, in the guise of power-ups. On the first level you'll just be given speed ups, while later levels will furnish your craft with shields (front and side versions, never both) side wing blasters, dual lasers and tri-lasers. The downside, one hit; one impact; one randomly spawning enemy appearing ATOP you; means death. Death then also means that you have to start over with NO speed, No powers. You're back to basic bog-standard ship and it's time to build it all up again. This in the later levels is a ... nightmare. Actually in the first level it's a fucking nightmare of some degree.

This brings me to the odd system of the game’s powerup supplies. You get to shoot background pods/objects, which will do several things. 1) Blow up with nothing inside, 2) blow up with a bullet fired back AT you or 3) give you a power up. But it's not the pods that have the power-ups and the order/sequence of the powerups depends upon the ones that you SHOOT, so the first level, first speed up power up WILL spawn when you shoot your first pod. No matter WHICH pod. So powerups appear on every Nth pod shot, not pod that exists.

It's an interesting system perhaps implemented for memory reasons, or an oversight on coding and references. Hard to say at this point but I've not really encountered many other games that use similar ones. Imagine Zelda where you got the master sword after the 8th chest you open, irrespective of the actual chest, so you could grab it in the hometown if you opened 7 other chest somewhere else. Not ideal for every game. But it works in this game to a degree.

The majority of enemies within the game will fly in, pattern formation, then disappear off, or fly in, shoot repeatedly and try to ram you at the same time. Fun bunch of bastards. Then there's the odd system of those enemies that turn up and home in on you, but will happily sit right behind you if you're higher than them on the screen, but you can't go backwards, you don't have anything that shoots backwards, so you have to out manoeuvre them, which is almost impossible at the point of having no speed power ups.

The game is heavily punishing for mistakes. BUT, having said that, it is rather generous with the lives, boosting them regularly on the score multiples.

Having said that, I could happily play the game for hours and do NOTHING but listen to the music within the game, be it the introduction or the main music, or even the piece accompanying the name entry sequence for entering in a high-score. The musical score and composition is amazingly well presented and would be worthy of anybody's time to listen to, which most players will do while playing the game anyway. Though the "electric synth" solo does feel a little out of place, but it's the 80s so grind that axe away!

That said, the game isn't R-Type, nor Gradius/Nemesis, it's not complicated enough to be that and not fluid enough to warrant the attention some of the more smooth games can muster, but it has its charm and those looking for challenge on the C64 that isn't about not biting your own arms off in frustration and bashing your genitals with them, could do worse than looking to Hades Nebula.

Or you know, use some poke and peeks and cheat your way through.