VGJUNK'S FAVOURITE GAMES, PART 2

Last time out I wrote about ten of my all-time favourite videogames, but because I am an indecisive sort I just kept going. So, here are another ten, in no particular order. It was a fun exercise, and I hope you found a couple of games you've never played before that you try out and end up enjoying.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: Curtain Call (3DS, Square Enix / indieszero / 2014)

I am obsessed with this game, I really am. Not since Tetris has a game exerted such a strong “just one more go” influence over me, and that’s okay because the Final Fantasy-based rhythm action game is perfect for playing in short bursts. It’s also perfect for playing in marathon sessions, if you ask me. Okay, so how you feel about Theatrhythm is, in large part, dependent on whether or not you like the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy games. I love Final Fantasy soundtracks and I love rhythm action games, so it was an easy sell for me.
If you’ve never seen it in action, Theatrhythm has you tapping and swiping along with music tracks from the Final Fantasy series – over two hundred of them included in the game – and it’s a simple gameplay system that works perfectly. Inputs are precise, the difficulty levels are excellently balanced and it’s packed with that sense of pleasure that comes from getting really immersed in the action.
The gameplay is excellent, but as bonus it’s all wrapped up in an extremely loveable package. Square Enix are putting more effort than ever into leveraging the history and characters of the Final Fantasy series into lucrative spin-offs with games like Final Fantasy Explorer, Record Keeper and Brave Exvius, but it’s in Theatrhythm that it comes together the best. That’s partly because it’s all just so sweet and charming. Some people will complain about the cutesy, doll-like character art, but personally it’s preferable to yet another CG model or FF6 sprite edit. There’s fan service aplenty, stat-boosting art cards to collect. You can make a party composed entirely of dads. Even the online versus mode is a pleasure. Sure, there aren’t many players about and when you do get a match you’ll probably be stomped by someone with a playtime of 999 hours, but even if you lose you swap a little profile card with the other player, which includes a new map for the game’s quest mode, and you also get one of the game’s collectable cards. The way it works is that you each pick a song and the one that you battle each other over is randomly picked - and the majority of the time, an online opponent who won the virtual coin-toss will pick the song you chose last time, so that everyone gets to play the track they want. I'm getting old and soppy enough that this kind of unenforced ettique is very heartwarming to me. Like I say, Theatrhythm Curtain Call is utterly charming and it’s also the only game to make me say “I wish they’d keep releasing DLC for this.”

God Hand (PS2, Clover / Capcom, 2006)

The game that was so much of a cult thing that it stopped being a cult thing and became widely known, God Hand came out of nowhere and finally got the transformation of the beat-em-up genre from 2D to 3D right. The ultra-weird presentation that revels in such glorious insanity as wrestlers in gorilla costumes and fat demons called Elvis is the perfect parter for a deep, challenging and customisable combat system. It’s not a game that wants you to have an easy time of it – it gets more difficult they better you play, for starters – but it only treats you mean because it knows you’ll get so much satisfaction when you master the combat.
A harsh taskmaster, then, but one that exudes such a loveable sense of dumb fun that it’s impossible to get angry at. And hey, if you do get angry, you can kick a dude in the balls to relieve said anger, complete with cartoon “ding” sound effect. Finish the whole game for the best and most appropriate ending to any videogame, then head straight back into it on a higher difficulty. When it all clicks and you’re dodging attacks almost without thinking and counter-attacking with suplexes, you’ll be glad you did.

Global Defence Force (PS2, Sandlot, 2005)

Another cult game, this second entry in the still-going-strong Earth Defense Force series is the one that first revealed to me (and many others) the inestimable charms of the EDF. I remember hearing about it through the GameCentral page on the late, lamented Teletext service, where they gave it a glowing review. “What the hell”, I thought, “it’s a budget game so I might as well pick it up. Maybe its as good as they say.” It turned out to be even better, the ultimate surprise package. It’s a simple premise, born from the sci-fi movies of the fifties: giant insects are invading the Earth. Shoot them. Shoot them and shoot them and shoot them, because there are bloody thousands of them, crawling over buildings, scurrying across beaches and occasionally calling in an off-brand Godzilla for back-up.
Quite a few games on this list have what I’d describe as a feeling of purity about them, where they do one thing but do it exceptionally well, and Global Defence Force fits exactly into that category. The graphics might be ugly and the slowdown rampant, but it’s worth it to have destruction on such a huge scale. You haven’t lived until a group of tarantulas the size of buses are leaping at you, only for you to send them back where they came from with an enormous plasma cannon. Five difficulty levels, two very different playable characters and dozens of weapons to collect give it plenty of longevity, too. Try the Inferno difficulty level, if you fancy a challenge. It even says in-game that only a handful of people in the world will complete it, so if you’re the kind of person who responds well to that kind of antagonism, then have at it.

Night Slashers (Arcade, Data East, 1993)

Of all the hundreds of games I’ve played in my time writing VGJunk, Night Slashers is the one that stands out as being my luckiest find. I might never have played it otherwise, but since I did it’s shot straight onto my list of all-time favourites. It combines a genre I love with my favourite setting to produce a side-scrolling beat-em-up that takes place in a gore-soaked horror world of Frankensteins,  mask-wearing psychopaths and zombie bowling. That’d carry it a long way even if it wasn’t any fun to play, but happily Night Slashers is one of the more refined examples of the form. It’s got the basic brawler set-up of multi-attack combos, throws and a special health-draining attack, and then it piles plenty of extra moves on top of that: charge attacks, screen-clearing magic spells and the ability to wedge zombies into the ground like tent pegs so you can kick their exposed heads off, amongst others.
You all know of my love for Halloween by now, and there are very few games more evocative of the season than Night Slashers. It’s even more of a gory B-movie than most gory B-movies, and being freed from the limits of what special effects can accomplish allows it to be packed with things like monsters whose flesh melts off when you punch them, all set to a wonderful soundtrack that I’d describe as action-horror-rock if I had to give it a genre. Night Slashers might not be the best arcade brawler, not while the also excellent Alien vs. Predator exists, but it’s just - just - my favourite.

Shining Force 2 (Megadrive, Sonic Software Planning / Sega, 1993)

As an RPG fan living in Europe, and especially as a SNES owner, the nineties were kinda rough. So many of the classic RPGs of the 16-bit era never made it to our shores. No Final Fantasy VI, no Chrono Trigger, no Earthbound. Of course you can buy all those games though various different services nowadays, but that’s no good to pre-teen, summer-holidays-to-fill VGJunk, is it? Happily I managed to get my console RPG fix through a borrowed Megadrive and Shining Force 2: the jolliest, most candy-coloured RPG out there. Just thinking about Shining Force 2 means I’m immediately hearing the town theme in my head, a musical theme that by rights should appear under the definition for “jaunty” in every single online dictionary.
Yes, Shining Force 2 is a happy game, a cheerful game, a strategy RPG where, if truth be told, the strategy rarely gets more complicated “try to fight enemies one at a time.” Not every RPG has to be unfathomably deep to be enjoyable, though, and sometimes it’s nice to just command your fairy-story characters about the battlefield without worrying about personal affinities or elemental alignments or what have you. Shining Force 2 is a great example of this kind of gaming experience. A colourful world to explore, packed with weird characters and dialogue with a slightly wonky translation that only adds to its charm, Shining Force 2 has a certain childlike sweetness to it. Would it be one of my favourites if I had had access to Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger as a kid? I’m not sure. Maybe I wouldn’t love it quite as much as I do, but I’d always have room in my heart for an RPG that lets the player put a werewolf, a vampire knight called Lemon and knock-off Gamera in their party.

Blood (PC, Monolith, 1997)

Anyone who’s been following me anywhere on the internet will already know all about how much I love Blood, and that’s a lot. Back in part one I said that Silent Hill 2 is the game that most feels like it was made for me, but Blood runs it a close second. It’s a first-person shooter created using the Build engine, much like Duke Nukem 3D - but where Duke Nukem 3D is a parody of and homage to over-the-top action movies, Blood is all about horror. “An undead cowboy with a pitchfork fights evil cultists” is an elevator pitch that makes me realise it’s probably a good job I’m not in charge of a movie studio. Everything about the world of Blood is just completely, spiritually nourishing to me, the computer game equivalent of a big mug of soup in November– the horror movie references, the sinister carnivals and haunted hotels, the ghost enemies that scream like someone with their testicles caught in a bear trap, all of it.
The setting is great, but it wouldn’t mean much if the gameplay was rubbish, but Blood delivers in that regard too. It’s got the classic, rocket-speed carnage that the golden age of PC shooters was so wonderful at creating, but with its own unique style of combat. Even the lesser enemies can be utterly deadly, so there’s less focus on the huge swarms of monsters you’d see in, say, Doom, and more emphasis on tightly-constructed corridors and smaller arenas, with excellent level design all the way through the game. The enemies are fantastic and nicely varied, and the selection of weapons is probably my favourite in any first-person shooter, from familiar friends like the double-barrelled shotgun to the destructive power of the dynamite bundle to more exotic tools of death like the voodoo doll. It’s the closest you’re likely to get to being the “hero” of your own gore-soaked horror movie. A Bruce Campbell-em-up, if you like, and that feeling is probably why I play through Blood at least once a year.

Deadly Premonition (Xbox 360, Access Games, 2010)

Let’s get this right out in the open: a lot of the time, Deadly Premonition isn’t that much fun to actually play. The controls are bad, the combat is repetitive and dull and I always seem to get one or two huge glitches whenever I play it. However, none of that matters, because Deadly Premonition’s gameplay is merely a vehicle for transporting a truly bizarre and completely captivating storyline. The comparisons to Twin Peaks are immediate and obvious, but Deadly Premonition twists that familiar setting into its own unique experience, creating a world that looks at first glance like low budget trash but eventually reveals itself as a game with a rare depth of personality. The game’s star, FBI special agent Francis York Morgan, is a truly fascinating character, and not just by the usually low standards of videogame characters. Driving around and hearing York talk about the movies he’s watched sounds like it’d be insufferably dull but it ended up being my favourite part of the game. You don’t often get such a glimpse into the inner life of a videogame protagonist, and as York makes his way through a surreal plot with a shocking twist at the end I find myself being totally captivated by this weird world full of oddball townsfolk. It’s also one of the very few games to make me feel genuine emotions. I had a lump in my throat at the end of the game, and it wasn’t the usual hastily-swallowed sausage rolls.
Deadly Premonition is a great example of what videogames that might be lacking in technical proficiency can make up for in sheer imagination and ambition. It starts out as a supernatural murder mystery but goes on to take in so many different themes, always tinged with a unique sense of humour, that any problems I have with the gameplay are completely negated. Of course, if you told me that you hate Deadly Premonition, I could totally see where you’re coming from. Not every game has to be for every person, though, and that’s the great thing about Deadly Premonition.

Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (PS3, Ubisoft, 2008)

I can’t believe I’m putting this game on the list. It’s a fairly generic tactical FPS in which terrorists get shot in Las Vegas. It’s pretty decent, although hardly more evolved than any of its predecessors. And yet, when I was thinking about this list I kept coming back to it for one simple reason: the Terrorist Hunt mode. I have spent so much time and had such a good time playing that mode, specifically playing it couch co-op with a friend. Just the two of you, a very limited number of respawns and a mansion / oil refinery / casino filled with terrorists who skipped the “camouflage” portion of their training camp and turned up in bright red fatigues.
I couldn’t even tell you what it is about this mode that was so appealing to us, leading to RSV2 becoming our go-to game any time we fancied some shooter action. Maybe it’s the way the terrorists sometimes command their comrades to “Aim and shoot!” just before you aim at them and shoot them, the irony being as devastating as the machine-gun fire. Maybe it was the uncomplicated, solid combat combined with the tension of only having limited lives. I have no idea, I really don’t. I guess that’s why they call your tastes “tastes.” I like the taste of Dr. Pepper, but I sure as hell couldn’t explain why.

Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Arcade / PS1, Capcom, 1998)

I’m pretty bad at fighting games. I’ve explained this before, it’s because there are so many of them that I want to play that I never have the time to sit down and really master any single game. I’m greedy, basically. Street Fighter Alpha 3 is the closest I’ve ever gotten, though, thanks in part to it being just the right level of complexity for me: lots of different fighting systems and three separate fighting “styles” to chose from, but nothing I can’t wrap my head around. Obviously there are many other Street Fighter games I could have had on this list – the impact of Street Fighter II’s SNES port is hard to exaggerate, that game became almost a religious calling for some kids – but SFA3 is my favourite of the bunch. I don’t know how well it’s regarded these days, having never paid attention to things like “balance” and “tier lists,” but it’s got that classic, super-slick fighting action that made Street Fighter famous in spades. It also has the most appealing graphics (to me, anyway) of the series, with big, cartoony sprites, and a huge roster of characters new and old. The PS1 version even adds a “World Tour” mode with RPG-like elements. At its heart, though, Street Fighter Alpha 3 is simply Street Fighter. Timeless, classic action that’s honestly yet to be improved on in a big way. Nowadays, if I’m going to play Street Fighter I’ll probably play SFV… for a while. Then I’ll hop straight back over to SFA3 and spend entire battles doing nothing but Dan Hibiki’s rolling taunt.

Chrono Trigger (Squaresoft, SNES, 1995)

What can I say about Chrono Trigger that hasn’t already been said a hundred times before? Not much, that’s what. Creative talent operating at the height of their powers to craft a true masterpiece, every aspect of the game slotting together to form a veritable Voltron of delights. A time-travel story that not only works, but opens up the possibility of over a dozen endings! Quite probably the best soundtrack on the SNES! Memorable characters, a team-up battle system, singing robot cats! Chrono Trigger is the ultimate gloomy afternoon videogame. Go on, try it text time it’s dark and rainy at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. Get under a duvet and play some Chrono Trigger, it’ll warm you right up.

There, I think that lot ought to do it for now. Some games were omitted because, while I do love them, everyone else does too and they don’t quite feel as special to me personally. Honourable mentions include Zelda: A Link to the Past, basically every Super Mario platformer but especially Super Mario World, Final Fantasies 5-8, Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Timesplitters: Future Perfect and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. What did I learn from this? That my tastes are pretty mainstream, mostly. There’s not much here that you’d mistake for being obscure, with the exception of Night Slashers. Also I’m a massive Playstation fanboy, apparently. And with that, I’m off to try to complete my CollectaCard collection in Theatrhythm Curtain Call, an endeavour that I’m sure is going to end up with me found dead from exhaustion, surrounded by probability charts and drop-rate tables.

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SATISFYING MOMENTS IN VIDEOGAMING

Today's article is all about the satisfaction you can get from videogames. I don't mean the big moments - beating that difficult boss, seeing the conclusion of a grand adventure, remorselessly slaughtering your younger brother in Goldeneye deathmatch until he begins to ponder the futility of existence and starts crying (sorry, bro). No, I mean the smaller moments, little things that hit my pleasure centres and make the withered husk of my heart whisper "yes, good, good" every time they happen. With that in mind, there's only one place I can start this list: Hell.

Boom-Chok-Chok

Doom II didn't change much from the original, because what could you possibly want to change about Doom? That's not to say id Software just made a collection of new levels, however. They also isolated and solved one of Doom's greatest flaws, namely the fact that the shotgun wasn't two shotguns. Thus, the double-barrelled and accurately-named Super Shotgun was introduced in Doom II.

I'm sure most people reading this will have played Doom and used the Super Shotgun at some point, and I'm also sure that anyone who has used it will agree that yes, it is one of the most intensely satisfying videogame weapons ever created. Each pull of the trigger results in a brief frisson of joy as death itself surges from both barrels like the blow of an Olympian god. One of the hard gods, too, not a wimp like Hermes. Everything you're aiming at is either shredded into a demonic flesh slurry or wishes it had been, and the sound - the thud of the gunshot and the chok-chok as you reload - hammers home the Super Shotgun's position as The One True Gun. It never gets old and it never becomes obsolete, either. It's always useful, always powerful and it can clear a room full of people more efficiently than putting one of my mixtapes one at a party. It makes you feel, if only for a fleeting moment, like you're powerful. Then you open a door to a room full of Revenants and have a split-second to marvel at Hell's homing missile technology before that feeling of power evaporates.

Retire to a Safe Distance

Over to my very favourite FPS now with Blood, and a weapon that's satisfying in completely the opposite way to the Super Shotgun. That weapon is the flare gun, and while the pleasure of the Super Shotgun comes from it's raw power and immediacy, Blood's flare gun is more of, oh ho ho, a slow burn.

Hit an enemy with the flare gun and nothing much happens at first: the flare sticks to them, and as they continue their advance you might think they only way the flare is going to damage them is if a passing airliner mistakes the illuminated enemy for a runway and lands on their head. A second or two passes, and then your patience is rewarded - the flare causes the enemy to catch light and burn to death. You might balk at the idea of a gun that doesn't make the bad guys fall over as soon as you pull the trigger, but in this case a pleasure deferred is a pleasure enhanced. It's particularly satisfying when used against the Cultists, the robed, druidic human agents of an evil god that make up the bulk of Blood's enemies. For one thing, even the lowliest Cultist can quickly drain your health if you're caught unawares or trapped by an ambush, so the ability to pop a few flares through an open doorway or window and retreat to a safe distance until the murder barbecue has reached a sufficient cooking temperature is nice. Also, Cultists speak in a made-up demonic language... until they burst into flames, at which point they switch back to English so they can scream in agony without the need for a translator. When the villains drop their eldritch lexicon, that's when you know you've really gotten under their skin.

Cameramen of the 26th Century

In an effort to move this article in a direction that makes me seem less like a violent psychopath, it's over to classic SNES racer F-Zero and the thrill of victory - specifically, the way the camera whips around when you cross the finish line.

A more cynical person than I might accuse F-Zero of being little more than a technical showcase for the power of Nintendo's then-new 16-bit console, with the camera flourish that ends each race being an example of flash over substance. It's good flash, though. Satisfying flash, and it's never unworthy of a miniature fist-pump when you blast across the line in first place to the sound of your racer screaming to victory. It's even more satisfying when you win a close race, because you get to see your rivals just behind you as you disappear towards the horizon, safe in the knowledge that they'll never be able to overtake you and you'll never crash into another of the generic, primed-to-explode racers that limp around the course like a wheelbarrow full of semtex.

From Downtown

NBA Jam is one of those sports games that can captivate people who don't give a toss about the sport in question - people like yours truly, for instance. I have no interest in basketball, but over the years I've spent a lot of time playing NBA Jam, and it's always a pleasure to come back to. NBA Jam's recipe for success is not a complicated one: it strips basketball down to its basics and then makes those basics ridiculously over-the-top, a refinement process that leads to non-stop, end-to-end action and lanky men pirouetting through the air like Peter Crouch on an electric pogo stick. The crazy dunks are one of NBA Jam's big selling points - I don't think there's ever been a game of NBA Jam played where the participants aren't at least subconsciously praying for the backboard glass to be shattered - but personally I get more satisfaction from regular three-pointer.

I think it's the simplicity that appeals to me: the gentle arc, the crisp swish of the net, the commentator not shouting "terrible shot!" at me. There's a zen-like tranquillity to it, or as much zen-like tranquillity as you can summon up with the constant "excited rats in a tumble drier" squeak of shoes on wood. If I'm being honest with myself, and this is probably down to being a Yorkshireman, there's also the satisfaction of frugality. Sure, you might have done three cartwheels, jumped so high that the aviation authorities require you to have a blinking red light on your head and then slammed the ball home while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but it's still only worth two points. You'll notice that's less than three points.

Handle With Care

In Super Mario Bros. 3, Bowser takes over the Mushroom Kingdom by giving each of his Koopa Kids a magic wand so they can turn the various kings of each world into animals, which shows a heart-warming amount of trust on Bowser's part. I get nervous when I see my nephew pick up a cardboard tube, I can only imagine the terror I'd feel if he had access to reality-altering magics. Anyway, the point is that when you defeat a Koopa Kid, they drop the magic wand and it falls from the sky, and it's always felt weirdly important to me that I catch it before it hits the ground.

I know that I'm not alone in this - I've met several people who also felt the strange compulsion to catch the wand. Why? Who can say. I don't think it's a subconscious desire to see Mario gain magical powers, he can already shoot fire out of his hands and fly. It's not like it's going to break, either, although it would admittedly be amusing if it did and Mario had to offer a shrugged apology to each king as they try to command the respect of their subject while in the form of a dog. It just feels right, is all, and it's strangely satisfying when you grab the wand before it lands.

Moonwalking

Since Symphony of the Night, all the "Metroidvania" style Castlevania games have given the player access to a back-dash move, which makes the hero scoot backwards as though they've opened their bathroom door to see a cobra coiled atop the toilet tank. Here it is in action in Aria of Sorrow.

Making this GIF for the VGJunk Tumblr was the trigger for this article, because dodging attacks using the backdash is very satisfying, especially when you consider it's not really all that useful. You can't attack while you're backdashing, and most of the time a simple jump or even just walking the other way would be just as effective. That's not the point, though - the point is it's cool, and occasionally downright cheeky. I'm sure this giant skeleton feels like Soma is taking the piss a little. The backdash is especially important to Alucard, because it's stylish and having style is what sets vampires (or their mopey half-human offspring) apart from other monsters. You wouldn't get a gill-man in a cape, would you?

It's Like Clicking A Ballpoint Pen

On to a more modern game with From Software's PS4 masterpiece Bloodborne, the glorious amalgamation of Dark Souls, Lovecraftian horror, Victorian Gothic architecture and blood. Lots of blood. Everything is blood. The healing items are blood, the currency is blood, even the rocks are blood. It's great. Series director Hidetaka Miyazaki has said that one of the goals of Dark Souls was to create a game that rewards the player with a sense of satisfaction for overcoming the game's challenges, but that's a bit too deep for this article. Instead, here's something entire frivolous.

Each weapon in Bloodborne can be transformed between two different modes at the press of a button, as you can see above with the Saw Cleaver transforming from a brutal, jagged slab of metal for close-range attacks to a brutal, jagged slab of metal on the end of a stick, for long-range attacks and sawing logs from the comfort of your conservatory or outdoor seating area. It's a simple process, but the way your Hunter flourishes their weapon, combined with the absolutely perfect sound design that accompanies each weapon's transformation, means that switching weapon modes is so satisfying that I did it a lot, even when it was completely unnecessary. I refuse to believe there is a single person who played Bloodborne who didn't have a moment where they flicked out their weapon's alternate mode as they slowly walked towards an unsuspecting enemy, because - and I say this with a complete lack of cynicism - it looks super cool.
But which weapon transformation itself looks the coolest? A difficult choice, but it's hard to deny the Boom Hammer.

It's a sledgehammer with a tiny furnace inside that you rev up by striking it like a match on your shoulder. Again, it's called the Boom Hammer. Don't ever let anyone tell you that the Souls games are too serious.

Rocket-Propelled Spiders

You know, I'm not sure whether I'd recommend the Earth Defense Force games to an arachnophobe. On the one hand, you spend a lot of the time being murdered by a churning, relentless wall of gigantic spiders. On the other hand, you have access to high explosives.

This is Earth Defense Force 4.1, but the point stands for all EDF games and that point is the indelible pleasure of seeing a giant insect - be it an ant, a spider or your fellow EDF soldiers, who are as insects before my might - violently ejected into the stratosphere by a well-placed explosion. Watch the spider being launched out of the top-right of the frame. He's gone and he's not coming back. A budget title it may be, but few other game series can match EDF for sheer carnage on a grand scale, and sending a spider back to where it came from (outer space, that is) with a rocket launcher is something that will warm my heart every time I see it happen.

Revenge of the Nerds

There's a clown in Day of the Tentacle, and like all clowns it's a heartless, malevolent presence that lusts for human suffering.

See? A truly ghastly adversary. However, the clown must be destroyed, because dorky hero Bernard needs the laughter box from inside the clown. But how can you slay that which does not live? Turns out it's fairly simple.

You stab it. You get your friend to send you a scalpel by flushing it down the high-tech toilet from the nightmarish future she's trapped in, and then you use the scalpel to stab the clown. It's perfect, really, and the satisfaction you get from it is mirrored by Bernard's expression of glee as he deals the fatal blow. I love the elegant simplicity of the solution to this clown problem - Day of the Tentacle is a game where you have to convince people George Washington is cold by blowing his teeth out with an exploding cigar, so "just shank it" stands out in stark relief and is all the more rewarding for it. Plus, there's the moral satisfaction you get from ensuring there's one less clown in the world.

A Gordian Knot

Capcom's PS2 bushido-em-up Onimusha is a fun adventure, right up until the point where you're presented with a life-or-death sliding block puzzle.

You know what's worse than a sliding block puzzle? Okay, yes, walking in on your parents making love and them not stopping, or contracting smallpox, but what I was going to say was "a sliding block puzzle with a timer." It's not an easy puzzle, either, and all these flaws combined are enough kill my interest in Onimusha, and possibly videogames as a concept, stone dead. So how could this possibly be satisfying?

This is how - the chance to offer a hearty "get bent" to the sliding block puzzle designers of the world.

There you go, then. A collection of brief moments that fill my heart with, if not song, then at least a jaunty whistle. That's what playing videogames is all about, surely? They should be fun, always, and if I find my joy in the act of stabbing an inflatable clown then so be it.

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EPHEMERA, VOLUME 5

Not as good as party time but better than intrusive exploratory surgery time, it's ephemera time again! Another five chunks of gaming nougat, served up on the off-chance you'll find them as interesting as I do, and definitely not as an attempt to distract myself from the fact I'm not playing Dark Souls 2 right this second. Enjoy!

So That's How It Works

Double-jumping: a common if generally nonsensical element of videogaming. We've all seen it done in a wide variety of games, and if you were the kind of kid who loved videogames but was also filled with boisterous energy - so most kids, then - you've probably tried to do a double-jump in real life. C'mon, admit it, you jumped into the air and then tried to force yourself upwards again and it didn't work. There's no shame in that. I once tried to recreate Guile's famous somersault kick on my younger brother and all that happened was that he got a severe concussion. The laws of physics are in opposition to the double-jump, so it's nice to see that Capcom made the effort to ground the double-jump in reality in Devil May Cry.

Okay, so "reality" perhaps isn't the right word, because Dante double-jumps by forming an arcane sigil in mid-air from which he can jump again. Still, I appreciate the gesture and as a bonus it looks pretty cool. It also explains why I can't double-jump: unlike Dante, I am not half-demon. I'm only one-eighth demon. Great-grandpa VGJunk was into some weird stuff.

Shinji Mikami's David Cronenberg's The Fly

If it enjoyed a cruise on Noah's Ark, then the Resident Evil series has a monster based on it. Lizards, apes, dog, whatever the hell the Bandersnatch enemies from Code: Veronica were supposed to be. Then there's this friendly fellow.

That's a Chimera, and they're part-man, part-fly and I've got a suspicion one of Umbrella's researchers dropped some red rope liquorice into the mix. I love that design, with the menacing sickle of a hand and the faintly sympathetic facial expression. Plus, according to some of the guidebooks Chimeras are created by implanting the mutant egg into a human host and having them carry it to term, which is the kind of grotesque detail a horror fan like myself can really appreciate.

However, my favourite thing about the Chimeras is that they're barely in the original Resident Evil at all. They pop up in a couple of rooms right at the very end of the game, and that's why they're so effective. I can't speak for anyone else, but by the time I was deep in the Umbrella laboratory I knew the end of the game was right around the corner and I really wasn't expecting the introduction of any new enemies. The final boss is what's on your mind, so entering a new room only to be swarmed by ceiling-scuttling fly-men that move unlike any other enemy you've faced thus far - that was a wonderful surprise, albeit a surprise that caused me to waste a load of ammunition through panicked attempts to destroy these vile insectoids. If you were thinking of recruiting me for your SWAT team, don't. Also, because they're so scarce and you don't necessarily get a good look at them, the Chimeras remain a strange and unsettling foe that make you wonder what other abominations Umbrella have cooked up. As the later games showed, the answer is "all of them". All of the abominations.

Bwee-ee-ooo

SNES classic The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past now, a truly excellent game of undeniable quality and polish from which I am going to mention one tiny detail. In A Link to the Past, you have to travel between the Light and Dark Worlds, sometimes by looking into a hand mirror with inter-dimensional powers. When you do, you're treated to this sound effect.

That's it. That's the sound of someone phasing between two separate but connected planes of reality. I will hear no arguments to the contrary, that is the perfect aural accompaniment for that particular action. I haven't tried A Link Between Worlds yet, but if they've changed that sound effect I don't think I can bring myself to play it.

Possibly The Most Immature Thing You'll See Today

Micro-scale Amiga football sensation Sensible Soccer is beloved by many and is still fun to play today, but the title is possibly a touch misleading. It may be enjoyable, but sensible? Maybe not, as demonstrated by the 1994 sequel Sensible World of Soccer. As well as featuring vast numbers of the world's club and national teams, SWOS also included some "wacky" custom teams based around various different themes.

For example, this team is called Kebab Shop and all the players are named after things you might find in a kebab shop. I bet Cheeseburger and Chips link up will together, although I'm surprised there isn't a player called "food poisoning".

Here's Into the Void, a team that you probably shouldn't pick if you're suffering from a case of The Mondays. There are others based on members of the game's development staff, or types of cheese, or books of the Bible, but because I have all the maturity of a twelve-year-old this one is my favourite.

Members Only, a team where every player is named after euphemism for male genitalia. Someone at Sensible Software sat down, thought of all the things they've called their tackle over the years, (I've just noticed "Tackle" isn't on that list, which seems like it should be a given considering this is a football game,) made a team out of those words and placed it into one of the most famous and best-selling games of the British home computer scene. I can't imagine something like that ever happening in FIFA, and that's kinda sad.

Accessories Sold Separately

Monolith's 1997 shooter Blood is one of my favourite-ever games, and I don't often miss an opportunity to talk about it's horror B-movie atmosphere, delightfully sinister enemies and makeshift flamethrower comprised of an aerosol can and a cigarette lighter. This little droplet of Blood is one for the kids, however.

The secret level in Blood's fourth chapter is called "Mall of the Dead" and yes, it is a pastiche of Dawn of the Dead, only with more shark-men and screaming Grim Reapers, so it's like Dawn of the Dead but better. The mall is home to a toy shop, as malls so often are, and the window of said toy shop is home to a display of something I'd give my right eye to own: a collection of Blood action figures!

It's a simple trick - the enemy sprites have been shrunk down and arranged together - but it's just so charming. Man, I would buy every single toy in a range of Blood action figures. Imagine the possibilities! A Caleb toy with pitchfork-stabbing action! Cultist dolls that jabber away in their bizarre language when you pull their string! Exploding mime artists! Right, I'm going to need to set up two KickStarters: one to buy the rights for Blood and another to get these toys made. I won't be content until an "Axe Zombie with Detachable Head" action figure is sitting on the desk in front of me.

Recently on VGJUNK:
Alice Cooper and gore in Go to Hell!
Cheerful golf adventures in BS Golf Daisuki! O.B. Club!
Halloween comes early in Night Creatures!

VGJUNK MUSICAL HALLOWEEN PLAYLIST PART 3

With only two days to go until the big day, I won't waste any time. Here's part three of the VGJUNK Musical Hallowe'en Playlist! If you need to catch up or you want more, then here are Part One and Part Two. Onwards, to horror!

Dark Carnival, Blood, PC

Is there any type of music creepier than carnival music? I'm pretty sure there isn't, and if there is it must exist in some alternate dimension which, thank God, our ears are just not evolved enough to perceive. There's glockenspiels, accordion and at around the 2:08 mark there is the laughter of what I'm sure you'll agree is a clown that wants to eat your liver. A good track to play if you have any coulrophobic guests, then; also useful as music to have in the background whilst you tell your children why you're not taking them to the circus because Daddy can never go back there.

Title Screen Theme, Super Metroid, SNES

Some of the most utterly sinister music ever produced, I swear. Just this and a shot of some corpses, and Nintendo's reputation of only producing family-friendly games seems very odd indeed. Very (and one assumes deliberately) reminiscent of the themes of films such as Alien, it's the perfect mood-setter for Samus's adventure, filled with fragility and loneliness.

Intro Theme, Devil's Crush, PC Engine

When I wrote about Devil's Crush earlier in the Hallowe'en season, I mentioned that the main table theme was fantastic, and so it is. I'm also a big fan of this intro theme, a sort of John Carpenter / Planet Terror-esque slice of creepiness. Much more suited to a slasher film than a pinball game, even a horror-themed pinball game, and I guarantee that when you hear it you will be compelled to dress like Michael Myers and sneak up behind clueless sorority girls. Please don't though, and if you must, don't tell the authorities it was me that sent you.

Computer Station, Doom, PS1

One thing that the PS1 version of Doom had that was far, far superior to the PC version was the music. Gone were the hard-rockin' MIDIs ripped off from the heavy metal classics of the day, replaced with twitching, groaning ambient soundscapes that enhanced the playing experience massively. Much like the Cathedral music from Fallout that I mentioned in Part One, the PS1 Doom soundtrack overcame my usual apathy toward ambient soundtracks and lodged itself permanently in my cortex. I had trouble chosing a favourite, but in the end I settled on Computer Station, mostly because it has some wonderful sound effects, notably the indecipherable howling at the beginning and strange metallic scratching noise heard throughout, for example at 1:20. If you're looking for some ambient background music for a Hallowe'en get-together or even a game of D&D or something like that, you could do a lot worse than the Doom soundtrack, and you can download it all here.

The Oracle, Secret of Mana, SNES

Finally for this installment, and indeed this year, wrap your ears around the all-out sonic madness that is The Oracle. Chanting, heavy metal, glockenspiels, drum n' bass, it's all here, all crammed into one track that could have turned out to be an unlistenable mess but is, in fact, creepy as all hell and truly bad-ass at the same time. A lot of its charm lies in the samples; those gongs at the start that make it sound as though it's going to a standard "oriental" type theme (when it isn't), the clanging industrial steel, the chanting. The whole track really is a tribute to composer Hiroki Kikuda and his dedication to collecting the best samples and not just settling for pre-made MIDIs. A real-nerve-jangler as opposed to the slow burn of the Metroids and Dooms listed above.

Well, that madness seems like a fitting way to end the VGJUNK Musical Hallowe'en Playlist. Give them a listen on Hallowe'en night, and possibly rig your doorbell so that it plays The Oracle whenever someone presses it. That'll give the trick-or-treaters something to think about.

BLOOD

Today, I'll be discussing one of my all-time favourite videogames: Monolith's 1997 FPS Blood.


Ah, Blood, one of the many warping influences on my juvenile brain that lead me to become the pillar of the community that I am today. Did you ever play Duke Nukem 3D? If you did, this'll be easy for you, because Blood is Duke Nukem 3D but better. They are both first-person shooters built using the BUILD engine, a sort of 2-and-a-half-D game engine that gives the appearance of a 3D space with some restrictions, most notably the lack of a proper height component: for example, you can't have a room on top of another room using the BUILD engine. Otherwise, Blood is pretty much the same as most other FPSs, especially those from around the same time. Run around the level, shoot enemies, find items and ammo and keys, solve the ocassional puzzle, reach the end of the stage. So why is Blood any better than its peers? Well, there're a few reasons.


First off, Blood eschews the normal sci-fi approach of Doom and the rest, instead going for the storyline and overall atmosphere of a 1980's horror movie. As you can probably tell by the fact I'm having a whole month's worth of Hallowe'en on this blog, I am a huge fan of all things horror-related, so when Blood came onto my radar when I was about thirteen, my eyes probably flew out of their sockets like a cartoon wolf's after he's just seen a foxy nurse. You play as Caleb, a red-glowing-eyes type in a fetching black duster and fedora ensemble who is one of the the four Chosen Ones of a cult called The Cabal. Short story even shorter, the dark god of the Cabal decides he wants Caleb dead, Caleb doesn't like this idea and sets off to kill the dark god Tchernobog. Bam, story in place. Now for the blood!


Yes, Blood lives up to its name, with gouts of the red stuff flying from the corpses of your enemies, dead bodies nailed to the walls and zombie heads that can be kicked around for your amusement. This was a time of media panic about violence in videogames - with other PC games like DN3D and Carmageddon taking a lot of flak, Blood seemed guaranteed to cause both outrage and interest. Luckily, it's lower profile when compared to those other titles seemed to spare it from too much controversy. So, violence: but what can you cause violence with, and to whom?


Two things that I love about Blood are its weapons and its enemies. You start with nothing but a pitchfork, which functions as Doom's chainsaw or Duke's Mighty Boot, but you quicky progress to flareguns that set the enemy alight, Tommyguns and bundles of dynamite that cause Caleb to cackle wildly when you cause enough carnage with them. Later on you find some more exotic death-dealing devices, such as voodoo dolls (just point and stab!), aerosol-can flamethrowers and crazy-ass shaman sticks that drain the life out of your opponents. Blood was also one of the first games to feature alt-fire modes on its weapons. My favourite alt-fire mode? Probably the Tommygun, where pressing alt-fire just makes you wave the gun around wildly while spewing hot lead-based death everywhere. That sounded kinda disgusting, didn't it? And speaking of disgusting, you need something to fire these weapons at - and Blood doesn't disappoint in that regard.


Zombies - with axes, no less - are the first thing you fight, and they generally keep getting up until you knock their head off. There are flaming hell-hounds, gargoyles, shark-men, fat zombies who look like kebab shop owners and scythe-wielding spectres who emit such a brain-melting scream when you encounter them that you'll go all-out with your best gun to make sure they're dead (un-undead?) as fast as possible. Seriously, it's such a nerve-jangling wail of misery that I can't help but wonder if they recorded a man having his testicles placed in a mousetrap to capture it. However, the enemies that you'll be fighting most often are one/some of my favourite enemies of all time: Cultists!


Disfigured monks with Tommyguns are cool enough, but these guys have an ace up their voluminous sleeves: they have their own language. Yes, Monolith gave them their own vocabulary, and they aren't afraid to shout it out loud when you're fighting them. If you read VGJUNK regularly, you'll know what a sucker I am for old-school videogame speech, and this is some of my very favourite. Here's a video of some of the monks' favourite phrases:

Shouting "Maramas in fear books!" was a fairly significant portion of my childhood, as you can probably imagine. The best bit? Shooting them with a flare while they're speaking, so that they suddenly drop their cultist language and run aroung screaming "IT BURNS!". Genius.

Even better than its enemies and weapons, Blood has one thing that pushes it right to the top of my list: references to other things. The whole of the game is a paean to horror movies, and that's where most of the references come from, although there are plenty of others. For example, in the first level alone, there are references to Army of Darkness, Macbeth, Phantasm, The Crow and Return of the Living Dead. When I was a kid, I felt like I was the only person in the world who had seen Evil Dead 2, so when I came across some severed hands that chase you around shouting "I'll swallow your soul!" that was it, Blood had proven its greatness to me. There are even whole levels devoted to certain movies, including the "Overlooked Hotel", complete with a frozen maniac in the hedge maze, a level called "Mall of the Dead" which I think you can figure out the genesis of, and even a level called "Crystal Lake", home to everyone's favourite slasher film icon:

The music even contains the famous "ki ki ki, ma ma ma" effect. What's that? You prefer a different slasher icon? Well, how about this one?

See, Blood has you covered. In blood, presumably. It's not just films, either: the King of cosmic horror himself, H. P. Lovecraft, gets a few nods:


As does Edgar Allan Poe.


For the love of god, Monolith! A large part of the fun of Blood is hunting down these secrets, but in case you're lazy or have no hands or something, here's a video of some of them (it might be a good idea to click through to Youtube to watch).

There is one last thing that sets Blood apart from its rivals. You see, it contains mimes.


There are mimes. You have a pitchfork. You can stab a mime... with a pitchfork! You can find these... men, cursed souls who practise the least entertaining form of entertainment known to man, and put them out of their misery. You may be trapped in an invisible box, sonny, but it won't protect you from four steel prongs of pain.

Of course, Blood has its flaws: after all, it was released 13 years ago. If you're the kind of person who really cares about graphics you'll probably struggle with it, and the terrible mouselook is a problem. Also, the enemy AI is poor to the point of retardation, especially when the spectres just end up rotating ever higher into the air, screaming their terrifying screams until you manage to get their attention so you can kill them and shut them the hell up. But these are all minor flaws, and it's still as fun to play now as it was when I was a kid. It's a nice change from things like Halo at any rate, and it makes me wish more modern FPSs would concentrate on the single-player mode. If this has made you want to play Blood, then you can get it at GoodOldGames for a mere $5.99 (less than £4!), including both the expansion packs and DOSBox so you can play it on something that isn't older than Bruce Forsyth. It's a great deal and I recommend you go and buy it right now!
Well, that's Blood. Long shall it remain one of my favourites. Until next time - crudux cruo!