Lisvender has sent us this review for your reading pleasure. You remember reading, it’s like listening to a podcast, except with with your eyes.
So we’ve got Wii Vitality Sensors and Jesus Christ even MORE Rock Band crap and Tonight on Alan Wake Prime-Time Dramas and motion-sensing cameras with motion sensing paintbrushes and creepy little Milos staring and for God’s fucking sake the bottoms of avatars’ shoes coming at us this year, and now I want to kill myself in even more horrid ways than I did after last year’s E3. With all this disillusionment pouring down on me like a rockslide, I had to ask myself: is there even one game I still like anymore? Is there still a game out there that can excite me and keep me entertained for hours on end? What game should today’s games be emulating? A few seconds later, I thought of the answer to those questions.
I thought of burly, muscley men with oversized guns blasting the shit out of mutant terrorists. I thought of air-to-surface missiles pounding into nuclear reactors. I thought of babbling dictators, heat-seeking missiles, and throngs of bloodthirsty beasts. I wasn’t thinking of Gears of War, though. I was thinking of Total Carnage.
Total Carnage, a Midway dual-stick shooter that is the spiritual successor to Smash T.V., is my favorite video game of all time. Honestly. I can play through it over and over and never tire of it. E3 ‘09 didn’t have a single game that looked to match the verve and balls of this 1992 arcade title, and the gaming world is all the worse off for it. Even recent dual-stick shooters like Geometry Wars can’t compare to Total Carnage; they lack the character, the spirit, and the joy that this game sports.
The story of Total Carnage is a mockery of the first Persian Gulf War. The mad dictator of Kookistan, General Akhboob, has been building an army of mutants and holding Americans hostage in his “Baby Milk Factory,” and that’s just not cool. In response, the Pentagon dispatches “the Doomsday Squad,” two guys named Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem, to find and bring the bad General to justice. They’ll shoot their way through three giant battlefields, killing hordes of mindless drones spawned from toxic waste, grabbing weapons and powerups that materialize from thin air, rescuing chained-up women in bikinis who shout “My hero!”, dodging heat-seeking missiles that telegraph their launches by muttering “Excuse me!”, and disarming time bombs that drop in from outer space. Yes, it’s stupid. It’s really a big joke. The whole game is unapologetically corny, campy, violent, bloody, stupid, silly, and worst of all, patriotic, but as was Midway’s style at the time, there’s always a grin and a wink behind the nuttiness.
The game is gorier than an 80s horror flick, with crowds of baddies that burst into a goulash of goop and flying limbs, and it’s sure to satisfy anyone’s bloodlust. The first boss, Orcus, is a screen-filling behemoth with cannons for arms, a giant, grinning face for a body, and a devil’s head on top, and he can only be taken down a piece at a time. It takes at least five minutes of constant firing to beat him, and watching his parts explode and fly off, as he cries “My arm!” or “My eye!” or even “My head!” is an experience hasn’t yet been matched in video games, not even after seventeen years.
Things only get weirder after that. At the beginnings of the second and third battlefields, players are tasked with weaving their way down long highways, taking down passing armored missile transports with an infinite spread gun. All through these segments, little Captain Carnage and Major Mayhem are hooting and hollering “Woo!” and “Yeah!” with thrill and excitement. The only reason I can imagine that these sequences were included was that, during testing, the designers recognized how much fun it was to simply shoot large targets with the spread gun, and decided to devote huge chunks of the game to it. There are other bonus sequences in which players must level a fleet of parked fighter jets by calling in airstrikes, and all while dancing about a sea of moving land mines. The second boss of the game isn’t a boss at all, but an endurance mini-game where the player must rapidly hit the start button to help his soldier break free from a torturous electric chair. Carnage’s body is twitching and burning, his eyes are tearing up and bulging from their sockets, sparks are flying, the gigawatts are mounting, and the strength meter is dropping. Mash that button and be free! You get a huge bonus if you pull it off.
The final stage is a real corker, one that will make “Your puny head swell,” as the game says. It’s not especially long, but it’s strange. The battle with Akhboob is extremely long, extremely difficult, and extremely goofy. I know the game is pretty damn old now, but I don’t want to spoil its craziness for anyone who hasn’t yet played it. Get this game and play it yourself, or, if I can’t convince you to play it, go to YouTube and watch some gameplay videos. Akhboob is not who you think he is, and if his identity doesn’t surprise you, then the final challenge, not to mention the game’s true goal, certainly will.
Anyone who’s beaten Total Carnage will likely agree with me when I say that it is the meanest video game ever made. It’s really quite rude. For one thing, it’s a quarter-vacuum. It’s very hard. Though the stages always play out in the same way, the timing and movement of the enemy hordes are unpredictable, and the only solid strategy is to keep moving and grab any powerups you can. Practice will reduce a player’s death count, but complete mastery is next to impossible. What’s more, the game is more than happy to taunt players, and berate their performance. General Akhboob will occasionally interrupt the chaos with messages that are hilariously similar to any given terrorist video, and which often end with him blurting “You suck at this game!” Candid text will flash onscreen warning Smash T.V. fans to flee from the arcade machine. The game calls players dufuses if they fail at certain tasks, tasks that they probably weren’t even aware of until they failed them. Even its best ending closes with a venomous lie, one engineered to encourage more quarter-feeding, and to generate gamer gossip about just how in HELL the game is to be beaten properly. So even if you earn Total Carnage’s best ending, the game won’t tell you that you’ve earned it. It won’t admit defeat. It wants you to come back, angry and determined to root out that last little secret, but you’ll never be able to.
I know I’ve made Total Carnage sound like a game made by assholes and for assholes, but the whole daring nature of it is what impressed me as an arcade-dwelling youth, and what keeps me so deeply enthralled by it as an adult. Many folks avoided it in the arcades because its brutal difficulty emptied pockets quickly, but nowadays it can be had on the cheap thanks to its inclusion in Midway Arcade Treasures 2. It’s worth every cent. It is a sensation, one whose feast of explosive outrageousness should be enjoyed over and over for years uncounted. This is what video games should be.
Final Rating: 3/3. Must-play. Find it. Get it. Play it until you beat it, and then play it again. They just don’t make games like this anymore.
Lisvender
Nearly 10 years ago, Sega released one of their last great original franchises. Along with Crazy Taxi and Space Channel 5, Jet Set Radio was one of the games on which Sega had pinned their hopes, only to see them crushed like thick pile carpet at a Weight Watchers meeting.
The premise of the game was you were part of a gang of hip kids who roller blade around a stylised version of Tokyoto (that’s what its called in the game) and paint tags on the walls in certain spots. You have two enemies to deal with- a timer and the Law!
With its colourful graphics and early cel shaded models, JSR was hipper than than a well-dressed hippopotamus at the Hippodrome. But it also had one of the coolest soundtracks ever unleashed on the videogaming publish. The late 90’s Japanese electronica perfectly compliments the overall sense of style the game exudes. Its still one of the best game soundtracks of all time.
The game itself, to me, was really a platformer in a set of funky threads. When you found a wall marked to be taggable, the onscreen prompts would direct you to rotate the analogue sticks to mimic the motion (though vastly simplified) of spray painting. The whole thing comes together in a way missing from so many modern cool, hip games
For some reason this game was retitled Jet Grind Radio for its US release but there were also a few extra levels added and Rod Zombie music (why?). The sequel was an original Xbox launch title and removed the timer at the same time as enlarging the levels markedly and tagging was reduced to just pressing a button in the right place. It’s not as good as the original so the DC game is the one to play. A sequel has been rumoured as has an iPhone port but either way you need this game in your collection if you have a Dreamcast.
Reviewed on PC. Developed and published by Valve
The original Day of Defeat was a free WWII mod for Half Life and after Counterstrike was one of the few mods to be successful enough to be bought up by the makers of the originating game (as happened with Counterstrike and Left 4 Dead). In 2005, the game was ported with semi upgraded graphics to the Source Engine, though with only 4 maps at launch though others were added intermittently. At some point, spurned on by the success of Team Fortress 2, DoD: S received a mini makeover with a film grain effect and killcams straight out of TF2 (yes Call of Duty did them first but these are literally the same as TF2’s down to the sound effects and the ability to take screenshots). Now you have nemeses and can gain revenge on those who kill you too much.
The game is a really simple class-based game with two teams (one German, one American). Most maps are simple capture the flag deals, but with a very fast paced capturing system compared to the eternity it takes to capture a control point in a Battlefield game. Other maps involve demolishing enemy installations (tanks, anti aircraft guns, etc) but basically its a “shoot and respawn until the map runs out of time” game. There’s a simple, yet deep game here that’s been keeping a loyal band of people still playing in this PC shooter environment ruled by the trio of CoD4, TF2 and L4D. People use grenade launchers and there’s no nasty n00btube comments like there would be in CoD4.
It doesn’t hurt that the Source-engined version of this game is over four years old and will run on almost any PC still in circulation. On a modern machine it looks ok but you may be missing the graphical OMFG you get with Crysis. Call of Duty 1 and 2 were bigger sales successes yet I can’t find a game on my ISP’s servers. There’s that typical Valve feel to the way it works and sounds, with the nasty touch that when you lose a round, the winners have about 10-15 seconds where they can kill any enemies still alive with impunity. Ouch!
So here’s the question- why has there never been a sequel to this and why not a console port? CoD WaW’s success proves there’s still a large market for good shooters, even WWII ones. I guess the new Wolfenstein will just have that Nazi-hunting FPS market to itself this year.
Reviewed on XBLA. Also on PC, N64. Developed by 3d Realms
Well Duke is back and this time its the original 1996 adventure in its entirety on XBLA. This isn’t a remake, merely a port but even after all these years, this is still a good game.
The game is a first person shooter starring Ass-kicking Duke Nukem, originally a star of a side-scrolling shooter before getting this 3D makeover in 1996. An instant classic managing to hit all the sweet spots for a typical teenage gamer (action, gore, smart ass wrestling style commets and some pixelated T and A), the game is also a case study in making a varied FPS. So much of the game play is done right that its hard to remember its rather unrelenting difficulty and some rather obtuse puzzle elements.
This port brings features online multiplayer and 8-player coop. It also manages to make the difficulty a non-issue without completely re-engineering the gameplay. When you play, the game is recording every move you make so that when you die, you can restart anywhere along the timeline of your current playthough of the level. The game is still hard, its just not as punishing as it was.
The multiplayer is like stepping into a time portal and emerging in 1996. All that’s missing is Ace of Base on the radio and giant cell phones that could cave in the skull of a hippopotamus. If you loved that sort of intense deathmatch gameplay, you might get some feelings of nostalgia but this is an excellent single player experience.
Graphically its still a 4:3 game with either decals or black bars on the side (though you can zoom the image to see more of the VERY PIXELATED graphics. The sound is just as crunchy as it was back in the pre HD era. But you are playing this game because you remembered it being fun and cool, not because you miss 3D games using sprites instead of 3D models.
Is this a portent for Duke Nukem forever actually coming out? I’ve no idea and after playing this and enjoying it, I really don’t care anymore. This sates any desire I had for more Duke unless DNF is very, very, very, very, very good.
controller1.com Rating 2/3
How controller1.com rates games:
Numbers are meaningless. But we’re going to give in a scale that makes sense
0- Don’t buy. It is a terrible game that you will instantly regret buying
1- An average game. Rent if you’re still interested or buy it very cheap
2- A good solid game. You should enjoy this but don’t lose sleep if you don’t play it
3- Excellent. You must buy this game
We also realise that we aren’t necessary the target market for some games. A game may not click for us but may be fantastic for others so we often include a qualifying score such as:
Controller1.com rating 1/3 (or 2/3 if you’re a fan of previous games in the series)
The overall score out of three is our opinion but there maybe a higher or lower score in brackets for some people.
If you really must translate our scores into percentages use the following metric:
(on a 0-10 scale this would translate to 0 = 1-3, 1 = 5 or 6, 2 = 7 or 8, and 3 is 9 or 10)
Also- when we review a game that is more or less the same on multiple projects, we list the title in each of the platform is available. We’re reviewing the game, not obsessing over minute frame differences or counting pixels, but we make clear which platform the game was tested on in the review title.
Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: DS, PSP, PS2, Wii, PS3, PC. Developed by Traveller’s Tales. Published by Lucasarts (NTSC)/Activision (PAL)
It’s the third Lego game based on Lucasfilm source material. And probably the best so the pressure’s on Lego Batman. Lego Indy takes the storylines from the first three movies and turns them into plastic heroin.
Maybe that was pushing it a bit far but what you have is a charming (if
sometimes obtuse) action game with puzzles, combat, vehicles and Short
Round able to destroy metal barrels with his bare hands.
Lego Indy has refined the formula laid down in Lego Star Wars but reducing the number of characters in your party (usually 2, sometimes three in some of the Temple of Doom levels) and very occasionally 4 (as in the final level of Last Crusade) but without characters who only have one talent that is occasionally used and is otherwise a drain on the fun (ie C3PO). Of course now you have phobias (Indy can’t go near the snake pits, Elsa won’t go near the rats, etc). You also don’t have unlimited ammo in guns and can only use weapons dropped by enemies (when they have them). A few shots and you’re empty. Of course any character can pick up a spanner to fix a machine or a shovel to dig up Lego treasure and small characters have their hatches leading to secret areas but on the whole this has refined the approach. There are puzzles based on Simon Says provided one of you characters has a blue book that’s usually sticking out of their pocket and some boss battle where its not immediately apparent what the fuck you have to do to progress (the worst was the thugee on the rock crusher)
That said there’s still some annoying crap such as often respawning on the edge of the cliff you fell off anyway, areas where you are constantly overwhelmed by enemies, some of whom now wield RPG’s that blow you to Lego bits with one shot. Obscure puzzles and boss battles are annoying but you’ll generally work stuff out without too much drama. I scratched my head a bit, but then I’m not very bright. But I think the Comedy 64 is more over-rated than Kristen Bell so I can’t be all that dumb.
Graphics don’t really matter much as they look the same on most platforms but they are quite pretty on 360 with background textures of non Lego items being rather nice. Lego is Lego and as such Marion looks like a tranny, but one without a penis so its not all bad for Indy. Lego Indy, of course has no genitals either so….
The Score is great and It’s nice to hear the music from Temple and Crusade since you can’t buy the fuckers on CD at the moment. The sound effects are also crisp, but many of them are the same as the ones from Lego Star Wars.
So I loved Lego Indy. Would I buy Lego Batman? Well, One Lego game a year is enough and I love Indy and Star Wars so much more than Batman. But I would be up for a Kingdom of the Crystal Skull game, just so I can hear people trying to popularise “nuke the fridge” and be burned like a goat’s bitch. Oh wait.
C1 Rating: 2/3
