As I've said, I was addicted to Resident Evil. I'd always flip through my Official PlayStation magazine looking for the words Resident Evil clone, I would write down the name of the game, and keep the list in my wallet for anytime I went to Babbages with some extra cash.
I ended up getting a lot of random horror games for the PlayStation 1 and 2. This learned behavior has followed me through to today.
Even though horror games have become more popular thanks to the rise of indie games and hot demos like PT, I still have fun hunting down the lesser known games.
So this list is essentially a mix of things that I didn't know were going to be important at the time and things that are still little known or played that have a special place in my heart.
With Halloween quickly approaching, I figured I'll do what every other gaming blog and site does. It's time to cram lists of spooooookkky games down your throats.
Today, I'm focusing on the Silent Hill series.
A series that got in early on the survival horror game and one that Konami seemed to keep it's hands off of through the first several.
Silent Hill's foggy town was often used to sell the PlayStation 2. It's demonic scenes and story line kept large portions of the mainstream away from it. It's influence has spread to both games and film, becoming more than a Resident Evil clone. Silent Hill is a survival horror pillar that will forever be talked about in video game history.
I started making real $5.15 an hour sort of money right at the end of the PS1's life and because of that, I made some questionable purchases with my newfound paychecks such as the four player dongle for the PS1.
This also meant that anytime OPM told me there was a must have game, I knew I must, and I would buy it.
One of those games was this game I had heard nothing about called Ape Escape. It was a revolutionary game that required you had a dual shock controller because all of the weapons were controlled by the sticks.
Until Ape Escape, I pretty regularly stuck with the d-pad for all control as I was used to it. (To this day, I can't play the classic Resident Evils or Tomb Raiders on the analog sticks)
Release Date: August 9th, 2016 Played on: PlayStation 4
I didn't buy into the hype as much as most people. No Man's Sky always seemed like a survival game first, exploration game second, sci-fi adventure third. I thought it was a cool concept, but not the type of game I want to play.
I don't have time to figure out the survival parts of games like Don't Starve. In the limited gaming time I do have, I like to be able to hit the ground running with a clear objective and clean instructions.
My buddy put a solid 15-20 hours into No Man's Sky and generally he liked it, but there were times where he would call and say, "I just don't know what's motivating me. I'm doing the same things over and over again, but I keep coming back."
So he let me borrow his copy just so he had someone to talk to about it.
I did get a little excited as I booted the game up and saw the loading screen where it was generating my opening planet. I got a sense that this was my planet and no one else would see it.
What generated was a mostly green and rocky gas planet. I saw my downed ship and had some vague goals flashing on my screen that I need to collect some matter to get my ship going.
First things first, I knew I could name my planet and make my mark on this game. So, because I'm an adult, I named the system "PooPoo" and my planet, "PooPoo Junction."
So I start walking around, firing my mining laser at rocks, some plants, even a mini-brontosaurus looking animal. I was just getting a feel for the game.
And then I got a warning that my environment protection was running out and I needed to find a second material to stave off gas asphyxiation.
I didn't know where to get this material so I continued mining a bunch of things and seeing some numbers under requirements count up.
I wandered through some small, empty habitats that looked incredibly like the empty, soulless habitats in Mass Effect. And these little hyena bastards kept nipping at my heels.
Then only thing propelling me forward is that deep human need to check things off my list. I saw another question mark on the horizon, and I had to head toward it to see what it was.
Then I got a warning that my mining laser was out of ammo. I didn't know this could happen. It looked like an overheat sort of system. I was just firing at everything. But there I was, staring at a warning that I'm out of ammo and need to recharge it.
I still hadn't found the first two materials I needed, now I needed a third. I took a look at my inventory and I didn't have any of the three materials, but I had picked up the materials to upgrade something on my suit, so sure, I'll do that.
Since I'm out of ammo in my mining gun, the thing that gets me resources, I was now told to start hitting rocks and animals with my mining gun to collect materials. So I run up to a rock, hit it, see that the health of this rock only goes down about 1/20th of it's life and I sort of flip out at the game.
I was done, officially, 20 minutes in, I was done.
I didn't expect No Man's Sky to change my life like other people. I didn't even expect to like it. What I found was a completely competent, great looking game, that wasn't meant for people like me. And maybe later when they add updates and DLC to it and put in more of their sci-fi stuff, maybe then it'll speak to me. But right now, the No Man's Sky vanilla version is not a game I want to interact with.
And people, that's OK. Games don't have to change your life. Games can be just a surface level building block which what to build with. Look at how Minecraft started out. It was a game that was like, "I don't know, here's a couple tools, figure this shit out." Now it's the top selling game of all time.
No Man's Sky might not ever get near that level. In fact, it probably won't. But the backlash the dev team are getting from this is sickening. It's yet another poisonous well that is going to probably cause a few great minds in gaming to leave forever.
I was left behind with hockey games early in the PS1 life. I liked my simple 2-3 button hockey. I couldn't understand how to flip pass, precision shoot, or play zone defense in the 3D world.
Things got too complicated for me and instead of doubling down and learning it, I just didn't play a single hockey game from NHL '97 (John Vanbiesbrouck cover) until NHL '13 (Claude Giroux).
I found I could run the net in NHL '13 and score sometimes. It was more fun with couch co-op with someone that knew what they were doing. With a friend, I could put together a pretty solid season.
Then I skipped a few years. Despite the cringiness of having to look at rival Jonathan Toews on my PlayStation home page lifting the cup, I bought NHL '16 and to my surprise the game clicked.
So, in honor of my boy Tarasenko being on the cover of NHL '17, I thought I'd dig out my favorite hockey video games of the past.
Walking past a skate park had my thinking about extreme sports video games this weekend. It's the first time in a long time I've thought of these games. The last time I considered them was SSX for the PS3.
The X-games inspired sports games really hit their stride and peaked during the PS1 era. You had the ESPN Xtreme trilogy (that wasn't super great), Tony Hawk (and all of its Razor Scooter and Dave Mira clones), and Cool Boarders.
But there was a generation of games before that on the NES. They were games that promised the action of these extreme sports, but you sort of had to squint a little and pretend that it felt super extreme.
Skate or Die - 1988
Skate or Die was one of those NES games that just sort of showed up in your best friend's collection. He doesn't remember buying it. His parents don't know how it showed up. If you asked around, no one but everyone somehow had it. It was like this invisible game in your collection that only friends could pull out and play.
Despite the ever extreme conundrum of skating or die, the game never clicked with me. It felt sluggish and unresponsive. The music felt more suited for a beat-em-up like Ninja Turtles. And I always had a hard time figuring out what the hell the game wanted me to do.
The one thing I did like was the art. For a Nintendo / ZX Spectrum game, Skate or Die looks great. Lot's of clean lines, large distinguished sprites, and a sense of a large city.
California Games - 1987
Unlike Skate or Die, everyone owned California Games. This was the ultimate package of 6 very distinct events that could be played with multiple people.
California Games had a nice rhythm to the events that once it clicked, you would be able to win the event for the rest of your life. I'm serious, haven't played in 15 years, go ahead and try foot bag, bet you can still score a ridiculously high score. I bet you can still knock that bird out of the sky.
The half pipe was one of those events where people either didn't know how to do it and would just beat their knees up with the skate board until out of lives, or they could go forever.
Roller skating had you zooming down the beachfront on your best quad skates, but this was also the most littered beach front in the world. You had to dodge everything from puddles to ice cream cones, while doing tricks, and try to get to the end.
Like skating, the BMX course was a treacherous affair where after dodging a whole mess of holes in the ground, barrels, and puddles, you were expected to stop on a platform at the end, despite for the entire 5 minute course, never using your brakes. This usually ended with me pressing every button desperately trying to stop as I fell off the other side of the peer.
And inevitably, one of your friends would realize that you got points for ever jump you did, so they would just bounce down the track until they crashed away all their lives.
And then there was surfing, which arguably was actually a better half pipe game than half pipe, and featured a shark that would menacingly eat your character randomly.
Then the least extreme games, foot bag (hacky sack) and disk throw rounded out the package. (I guess the possibility of bear attacks in disk throw was pretty extreme)
T&C Surf Design - 1988
T&C Surf Design was fast and responsive, challenging but not impossible, and so colorful.
It featured characters from the actual T&C Surf Design shop like tiki man, some cool surfing gorilla who I believe was named Joe Cool, and a fucking terrifying humanoid cat in tights. Actually, I don't know what the hell was going on, but I liked it.
The skate boarding felt great and was by and far the best on the NES. You could gather tons of speed, get so much air, and actually perform simple tricks like Ollies to dodge obstacles.
There were things to jump over and ramps to go off of. There are still a few ramps over holes that I've never managed to land and to this day believe it was a sick way to take health on an impossible jump.
The surfing took a lot more to figure out. It was some balance of gaining speed going down the wave, but then turning around and ramping up to score points. You had to dodge birds and some dude on a raft, and if you did right, the wave wouldn't crash down on you and you would end in the pier and get scored.
I remember sitting there listening to the waves crashing on the title screen for long periods of time. Sometimes starting the game while I ate a snack, just so I could listen.
There isn't a ton of money in these sort of games anymore. Tony Hawk poisoned the well with too many lack-luster outings. The X-games in general have lost some steam.
I'll admit, I was burned out on these games for a while. I almost picked up the ever so broken Tony Hawk 5 just to get a taste, but my senses screamed otherwise. I'm putting a ton of stock into Ubisoft's Steep. It looks incredible. A nice combination of actual mountain ranges mixed with team Red Bull like sensibilities.
I used to see Wild Arms hanging on the wall at my local Grandpa Pigeons. The cover art was just colorful enough for me to notice it existed, but just generic enough to where I passed up the game for other such gems as Bio F.R.E.A.K.S.
This was another Retronauts recommendation I picked up specifically to play on my handheld.
Wild Arms may be the perfect PS1 classic for the Vita. It's easy to pick up and play for 15 minutes or 2 hours. There are save points all over the place and it has this just sort of perfect flow where you don't really get tired of it. I've spent various long spats playing. Having just come back from a trip and playing a solid 5 hours, I have to say, this is one of the best PS1 RPGs.
