I've always enjoyed computer games and my tastes tend towards puzzle,
strategy and action adventure genres. I've included links to Amazon where
available for those that would like to buy a game, view the game's cover
or read reviews (just click on the game's title to be whisked off to
Amazon).
Currently Playing: Planet
of the Apes.
Action Adventure | Adventure | Board
Games | Flying | Platform | Puzzle | Racing | Retro | Shooting | Strategy
Action Adventure
Alien
Resurrection
If you liked the Alien movies then you'll love this game. I found
it very atmospheric; great when played in the dark! The levels are
plenty big with lots of exploring to do (although sometimes I'd get
lost). My only complaint is that this is such a hard game that without cheats I'd
never have been able to complete it.
Alien
Trilogy
Like Alien Resurrection this game has lots of atmosphere with great
sound, music and missions, but the graphics are a bit of a letdown.
Lots of challenges and thankfully not as difficult as Alien Resurrection.
Alone
in the Dark 4: The New Nightmare
This game belongs to the genre known as "survival-horror",
where your job is to stay alive long enough to solve the mystery amidst
all the scary goings on around you. You can play as either Edward Carnby,
a paranormal private investigator, or Aline Cedrac, a college professor
and requisite video game babe. These two protagonists cross paths every
so often but have separate adventures within the main story, which,
in this case, involves evil supernatural forces at work on the appropriately
named Shadow Island. Very impressive lighting and sound effects, genuinely
scary in places.
Duke
Nukem Time To Kill
This is a great action adventure game; plenty of shooting, running,
shooting, jumping, shooting, pushing switches, shooting, more shooting,
etc. You get the idea!
Great graphics, cool sound and plenty of action. The puzzles aren't
quite as hard as you'll find in other action adventure games, but you
still might have more fun if you've got an invincibility
cheat.
Quake
II
One of the all time classics on the PC, I thought I better try out
the PlayStation version. If running around shooting everything in sight
is your idea of fun then you'll love Quake II! I was quite surprised
at the good frame rate, and the game makes excellent use of the PlayStation's
controller. Unlike the PC version there is no built-in "God Mode",
so you better be good or you won't last long!
Silent
Hill
This is probably the spookiest game I've ever played, and I don't
scare easily! For best effect you should play this game at night, with
the lights out, and preferably with a storm blowing outside. The storyline
is a bit weird, and I'm still not sure I understand it, but Silent
Hill is a great survival horror game. Wonderful lighting and sound
effects make this a "must own" game.
Tomb
Raider
I figured I couldn't really be called a gamer unless I'd at least
played and completed a Tomb Raider, so I thought I'd start at the beginning
with the very first Tomb Raider.
Tomb Raider has lots of jumping around and climbing, plenty of deadly
traps and enemies, and the visuals and sounds are very good when you
think of how old this game is. I suggest that you use one of the many walk-throughs to
complete this game, otherwise you'll get very frustrated. Some parts
I found quite hard (i.e. in places you had to run and do several jumps
in different directions to get through swinging blades, etc); but if
you just keep trying you'll get there eventually.
Tomb
Raider 3
I enjoyed the first Tomb Raider so much that I thought I'd try another,
and so I moved on to Tomb Raider 3 (my local games shop didn't have
TR 2 so I skipped straight to 3). The graphics in TR3 have been greatly
improved upon, with very nice lighting effects. Control has also been
enhanced by adding a few new moves (crawl, monkey swing and speed dash).
Riding in vehicles adds some variety to the game (kayak and quad bike),
as does some new enemies (monkeys, piranhas and even T-Rex dinosaurs!)
Once again I needed a good walk-through to
get through some of the very tricky puzzles and to know where the traps
are.
Tomb
Raider: The Last Revelation
I couldn't resist another adventure with Lara Croft and so Tomb Raider:
The Last Revelation was purchased. There are some nice new moves (pole
climbing and rope swinging), new items (crossbow, laser-sight, binoculars,
etc) and an interesting method of combining items to solve puzzles
and make new weapons. Apart from a few places where I had difficulties
swinging from rope to rope, I found this the easiest TR game that I've
played. Highly recommended!
Adventure
Discworld Noir
I've been a big fan of Terry Pratchett's Disc World books for several
years and have read every single one of them (I even have an autographed
copy of The Last Continent). When the chance game to play a Disc World
game I jumped at the chance!
I spent a couple of weeks playing this game, on and off. You play
the part of a detective that has to solve a mystery. The mystery seems
to go in several directions but at the end of the game everything ties
back together. The graphics are pretty good and the voices are well
done too. I had to resort to a walk-through in
a few places, but overall it isn't too hard.
Dracula
- The Resurrection
I was very impressed with this game. You play the part of Jonathan
Harker, whose wife has run off to Transylvania and fallen into the
clutches of Count Dracula; you have to chase after and rescue her.
Fortunately this is the sort of adventure game where you don't get
killed just by talking to the wrong person or walking into the wrong
room (I hate those games!) The game also won't let you get too far
without completing important tasks (i.e. you won't get to the end of
the game and find the last room won't open because you should have
found a hidden key that was right at the beginning of the game!) The
graphics are simply stunning, probably the best I've ever seen on the
PlayStation. You can look 360° around (including up and down) and
the scrolling is incredibly fast and smooth. The cinematic sequences
are also great, but the best are the close ups of the character's faces
(you can even see the veins in their eyes!) There isn't too much of
a plot, and the problems are fairly easily solved, but I really enjoyed
this game. This is a two disc game.
X-Files
This is a whopper of a game; four discs worth! You don't actually
play as Mulder or Scully, instead you're another agent on a case that
eventually gets tangled up with Mulder and Scully. The controls and
puzzles are fairly easy. The whole game was filmed with real actors
at real locations, so a lot of your time is spent watching videos of
actors talking with each other. You can instruct your character what
to say and do, although this is limited to certain things. It's possible
to die in this game, so you'll need to be on your toes. If you're an
X-Files fan, like me, then you'll enjoy this game, otherwise it's only
worth renting.
Board Games
Monopoly
One of my favourite board games. The PlayStation version offers all
the usual variations that people like to play with. The animated sequences
are nice but I would have liked to see more of them. Thankfully you
can turn them off if you want quicker play.
Risk
I hadn't played this board game before I got the PlayStation version,
so my first task was to learn how to play the game. Once that was done
I found the PlayStation version to be quite engrossing. The idea is
to vie for global domination through military strategy. This version
is faithful to the original, plus there are lots of new maps that you
can play on and rule variations to the make the games more exciting.
Highly recommended to all fans of the original board game.
Flying
Ace
Combat 2
For me a good flight simulator should be fun to play, have great graphics,
and not take years to learn to fly! Ace Combat 2 more than meets this
criteria. There are plenty of planes to choose from and you can have
a wingman flying with you. Fifty missions are included (night flying,
canyon runs, etc). An enjoyable game!
Star
Trek: Invasion
This game is basically a flight simulator in space. You get to pilot
a Valkyrie fighter through 30 missions, some easy and some quite hard.
Great voice acting by Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) and Michael
Dorn (Worf). Unfortunately I couldn't complete the game because on
one of the later missions I got stuck in empty space and no amount
of flying around would do anything.
Platform
Ms
Pacman Maze Madness
This game actually came out after Pac-Man World 20th Anniversary,
and is very similar in style. You can play 2-D Ms Pacman if you want,
but I found that quite boring. The 3-D game is much more interesting
and has large worlds for you to explore and puzzles to solve.
Pac-Man
World 20th Anniversary
This game was a lot of fun, with lots of jumping around and exploring
worlds (similar to Sonic the Hedgehog), all in glorious 3-D! Yes, the
old 2-D Pac-Man has been replaced by a 3-D Pac-Man and world! Some
levels are very hard to complete as they involve jumping and landing
at exactly the right time, which was very frustrating until I created
an Xplorer cheat to give myself infinite health and lives. The game
is quite large and took quite some time to complete, even with the
cheats! The original arcade game is also included.
Puzzle
Hello
Kitty's Cube Frenzy
A very cute platform puzzle game. Hello Kitty's Cube Frenzy is meant
to be for young kids, and as such it isn't too hard, but older puzzle-loving
people will enjoy this too. Hello Kitty's Cube Frenzy has quite good
replay value, with multiple routes you can take through its levels,
a two player versus mode, unlock different characters, etc. The cute
graphics and music fit in well with the Hello Kitty theme.
Racing
Micro Machines V3
Quite a fun game that lets you race around in toy cars and boats.
Some of the courses are quite small (i.e. the kitchen table, where
you weave in and out of cereal packets, plates and cutlery) while others
are very big.
World's
Scariest Police Chases
Quite a good game! You get to drive one of several different types
of vehicle around a city, chasing the bad guys and trying to stop them
(either by shooting them or running them off the road). Unfortunately
when it comes to damaging the cars it seems like your car is made out
of tin foil and the baddies have titanium plated cars! As well as the
free format game where you can go anywhere you want (I found exploring
the city quite interesting; there's some fun signs and things) there
are also 20 missions that you can complete. I was going fine until
I hit mission 12 and just couldn't complete it no matter how hard I
tried. Fortunately my Xplorer cheat cartridge came to my rescue.
Retro
Arcade
Party Pack
Four games from the 80's: 720, Rampage, Klax, Toobin', Smash TV and
Super Sprint. Smash TV is by far the best game of the lot, with Super
Sprint a close second. Somehow the games seemed much better when I
originally played them years ago... Also included are video interviews
with the original game makers, which are very interesting and insightful.
Pong
This is a remake of the classic game Pong (you can find a Java
version here). In this version the graphics and sound are much
slicker than the original, and there are a number of sections to
play through (each with its own theme). Unfortunately the controls
aren't all that great and this makes the game very hard in places.
I quickly became frustrated with this game and gave up playing it.
Shooting
Ghoul Panic
A G-Con shooting game with three levels of play. Each level is a different
part of a haunted house. Very much like Point Blank with the type of
shooting games. An extra bonus is an adventure type game where you
explore the haunted house and enter different rooms. Each room has
a different game in it, and completing the game gives you an item that
you can use (i.e. keys to get into locked rooms, a torch to see in
the dark with, etc).
Gunfighter:
The Legend of Jesse James
Pretty standard G-Con shooting game, ala Time Crisis. You play the
part of Jesse James who is out to rescue his girl and avenge the death
of his buddy. There are five levels of play ranging from a saloon to
an underground mine to a train. The play is a little bit uneven at
places; what looks hard turns out to be easy and the easy looking stuff
can be a bit hard. The voice acting is pretty good, real Old West type.
The graphics are about average.
Mighty Hits Special
Another G-Con shooting game, quite similar to Point Blank. If you
liked Point Blank then you'll like this game too.
Point
Blank
Point Blank will keep you busy for quite some time. There are target
shooting games which you can play by yourself or against someone else,
and there's also an adventure game where you have to go around an island.
The target shooting games are split up into different categories such
as shooting something as fast as you can, shooting a certain number
of items, one bullet aiming, etc. The graphics and sound effects are
bright and breezy. This is a great party game too!
Point
Blank 3
More of the same. All the games are new (over 80 of them!), and if
you liked the original then you'll like this version too.
Time
Crisis
This is the game that introduced me to the G-Con 45 light-gun. Game
play is the standard hide behind objects, pop up and shoot a few bad
guys and then pop back down to reload your gun. Since this was my first
light-gun game I was pretty amazed at how well it worked.
Time
Crisis: Project Titan
Time Crisis: Project Titan is more of the same. You play the part
of a secret agent who has been framed in a presidential assassination.
There are lots of bad guys after you who you have to shoot, of course!
The graphics are improved over the older Time Crisis, but I think the
game is a little bit too short.
Strategy
Command & Conquer
If you're a military strategy fan and you haven't heard of Command & Conquer
then you must have been living in a cave somewhere for the last few
years. This is the grand daddy of them all, spawning several follow-up
Command & Conquer games (Red Alert, Red Alert 2, Tiberian Sun,
Renegade, etc). Its reputation is well deserved!
Military strategy games can sometimes be so complex that it takes
ages to learn how to play them, fortunately Command & Conquer is
easy to pick up and hard to put down. You control one of two warring
factions and are given missions to solve. Usually you have to built
a base, harvest a mineral called Tiberium to earn money which you use
to generate troops and military hardware, then attack the other side.
The music is quite funky and the between mission movie sequences are
well done.
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