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It's summertime, RFGen! Well, in North America anyway. For many of us, the summer season holds a lot of nostalgia, be it the warmer weather, the vacations, or the increase of free time due to school being over. Or all of the above! For me, summer mostly reminds me of playing video games in some form, and something as simple as waves of cottonwood seeds drifting through the breeze triggers it. Originally, I was going to focus on one game, but the other day when driving home from work, I got a strong whiff of green grass and the leaky lawn mower that cut it and I was instantly back in 1987 playing... Well, we will see. For now, let me welcome you again to summertime, whatever this may mean to you, and also to this little retrospective on my own summer memories.
Continue reading Summertime
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Public Security Section 9, or "Section 9" for short, stands as the most secretive and covert of Japan's Ministry of Home Affairs' internal groups. It exists as an anti-terrorist force capable of both defensive and offensive actions. Its members are considered the "best of the best" in their respective fields, each cybernetically augmented for enhanced abilities in stealth, combat, intelligence, and communication. Basically, these are among the most lethal people on the face of the earth. Their newest member, you, is also considered among the elite, but due to your rookie status in Section 9, you still feel that you have to prove yourself. Luckily, a mission has opened up, allowing you to show off your skills to the other members of Section 9, and thus justify your presence there. Jump into your diminutive spider-like Fuchikoma robot tank and prepare...
What?
Continue reading Ghost in the Shell for PSX
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Last weekend the first/third-person military shooter, ARMA 3 was free on Steam so I thought, "What the hay." I set it to download and two hours later fired it up. What followed was the most direct amount of game playing that I've had in a while, which equals roughly three to five hours of game play (that is, Steam calls it three but with restarts is closer to five). What is my impression by the time the free weekend period was over?
Continue reading A Three Hour Tour of ARMA 3
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Everything was fine when you started heading towards the galactic core. Spirits were high, the coffee was strong, and everyone had dollar signs in their eyes. Then your ship, The Clockwork, suffered damage and everything went downhill from there. Well, its important to keep a positive frame of mind (or that is what your shrink used to say), but something just seems... off. The UTA and Cizs are still at each others throats, with Bounty Hunters lurking behind the scenes, but there has been a lot of chatter in the space-waves as of late, talk of infected ships and who knows what else. Man, I hope you are ready for what is out there.
Continue reading Space Pirates and Zombies... and Bounty Hunters!
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Early this year I decided to take on the (perhaps foolish) task of cataloging the variety of space sim games and the myriad of space adventure-RPG games (think StarFlight and Star Control 2) with the purpose of starting a blog centered on those games. Three months into it and I find that I need to step back a bit and breathe. I need a palette cleanser. I thought I would take a look at what the NES and Famicom had to offer in the space sim/space adventure-RPG genres, but after three solid weeks of research and I decided to let it drift free. Perhaps another week. Instead I decided to focus on something fun, challenging, and space-themed...enter Solar Jetman: The Hunt for the Golden Warship. It contains shield management, simulated gravity, and the ability to escape the destruction of your spacecraft as a tiny spaceman to fight another day. The game was also an important title that helped transition me from Star Voyager on the NES to StarFlight on Genesis, which I also rediscovered during my earlier mentioned research cataloging task. Please join me while I take a retrospective look at Solar Jetman and I hope the game fairs better than Star Voyager did.
Continue reading Solar Jetman - Space, Adventure, and Gravity
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Day 24
Last night I heard a gunshot again. Sure enough, come morning my formerly clean yard is swarming with zombies. Luckily they haven't noticed me, but I don't know how long I can go peeking from behind the curtains before I am spotted. To make matters worse, the water has shut off, and there are too many zombies milling around outside for me to dispose of without risking infection. All of my carefully laid plans (fortified shelter, food, weapons, and the beginnings of a garden) have gone to waste. I figure I can last a week with my current supplies. If the swarm doesn't thin out by then I will have to abandon my shelter, trusting that I can eventually evade them and perhaps start over again in another part of Muldraugh. Until then, I have enough books and magazines to keep me sane. If only the power had held out I could read into the night, like when I was a boy. I can only pray that the swarm thins out so I can scavenge for food and water.
Continue reading Project Zomboid - Survival At Its Best
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Forbidden Forest is an action-horror game created by Paul Norman for Cosmi Corporation and released for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit in 1983, and re-released for the PC in 2000. I think all versions bear mentioning, however for the scope of this review, I would like to focus solely on the C64 version, as this is the only version I've played. Not exactly a landmark title, but nonetheless, Forbidden Forest is a game of note, if not for its interesting gameplay, then for the excellent aural experience. While SID chip-flavored tunes on the C64 have always had a strong following (with good reason), the excellent music tracks for Forbidden Forest are an excellent early example of why they are popular. The game could have simply been titled, "Forest" and as long as this music played during the title, it would convey the same meaning: There are some bad things waiting for you in this forest.
Continue reading Forbidden Forest at a Glance
At the inception of this article, I wasn't really sure exactly what to focus on. Would I do a top ten for the year? Would I do a top ten at all? What should I do it on? All of this was moot, considering that I wasn't confident that I could even name ten games off the top of my head that I played this year (not already covered in my blog). So with an empty head and a few ideas, I strove forward. I finally decided to touch on two articles that I never finished (but started out earlier this year), one article I wanted to write, but didn't quite get to, and three games that I remember playing that really spoke to me (that no one else covered).
*Note to future self: When doing a "Top of" list it is important to have a general idea of what games you played during said year. So in the future, it might be beneficial to actually keep up with the "Beaten Games" thread just in case I decide to do this again*
Continue reading The Top of 2014 - bomba Edition
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Once upon a time there lived an Aunt who was really cool. A Cool Aunt, one might say. The Cool Aunt lived in ideal circumstances, and was quite fond of video games. So much, in fact, that she would often indiscriminately purchase games based exclusively on the cover of the box. Needless to say, Cool Aunt ended up with a lot of duds, but being that she was a true fan of video games, she would often play them regardless of their dubious quality. Still, some were beyond reproach, and ended up being chucked into a paper box underneath her entertainment center along with leafed through gaming magazines, strategy guides, and other bits and bobs (at one point there was a boxed Timex Sinclair 2068). And there those goodies sat, waiting for some youth, desperate for entertainment, to play them.
Continue reading A Tale of Populous
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What if I told you there was a game, released for Windows, Mac, and Linux, that mixed the rich story and character interaction found in an Ultima game with some of the action featured in Zelda: A Link to the Past? Would you bite at such an opportunity or would you balk? Should your curiosity pique at such a combination, let me introduce you to The Real Texas.
Continue reading The Real Texas
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Sequels for horror movies rarely match the feel of the original. Sure, some of them are better, but are they as scary? I feel that in a attempt to recapture the feel (and audience) of the original film, most horror sequels are content with following the same basic formula of the original. So how do we get over such a thing? In the scope of this article, the answer is to create a movie sequel in the form of a video game. But does it work? Can the same kind of horror that stalks us on the silver screen translate to a completely different format, one that tends to rely on completely different ways to frighten the participant? The Thing attempts to incorporate the same survival aspects and monster design featured in parts of the film and couple it with squad-based shooter elements and team management into what is hoped to be a winning title. Did Computer Artworks succeed with such a lofty ambition or was this project doomed to failure from the onset? To find out, we'll have to fly south to see what has happened since the original film ended. Bring your coat, as I fear the cold can get overwhelming rather quickly.
**DISCLAIMER** - PICTURES AND VIDEOS BEYOND THIS BREAK CONTAIN VIOLENCE, BLOOD AND GORE, AND ADULT LANGUAGE THAT MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES. VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Continue reading Review: The Thing
[img align=left width=81 height=110]http://i1029.photobucket.com/albums/y359/necrom99/banana_zps34b800e7.jpeg[/img]Dear RFGeneration Members, as you might have noticed over the past few months, one of our long-time (since 2009) and active members on the site, bombatomba, has had a few of his most recent blog posts promoted to our front page. Our staff has enjoyed reading his work, has followed his blog closely, and used his posts to fill in dates at times when more content was needed. We are happy to announce that bombatomba has accepted our offer to join the blog writing staff and you will be seeing more of his work in the future. Please join our staff in congratulating him and welcoming him to the RFGeneration staff!
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Three Dirty Dwarves is a side-scrolling, action game, somewhat in the vein of Golden Axe/Streets of Rage, that was released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn and PC. On the surface, it has lots of great animation, especially for the main characters, a goofy visual aesthetic, amusing sound effects, and co-op for up to three players. However, underneath beats the heart of an arcade game that never was. Be it good or bad, at the end of the day we are left with this somewhat amusing game that remains fun (with a group) yet is nonetheless flawed. So let's go ahead and roll in the dirt a bit and explore Three Dirty Dwarves for the Sega Saturn.
Continue reading Three Dirty Dwarves: A Review
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Enter 1990 (maybe early 1991). Hot from months of playing Final Fantasy (my introduction to the genre), I needed a new RPG to play, but I found my funds seriously lacking. So what do I turn to? The small wall of $20 games at the local game store. Of that lean selection of 15 or so games, there was one that caught my eye, with a description of "Action fantasy role playing" on the back of the box. With a joy that only children with extra funds can know, I bought Hydlide, unaware in the slightest the impact this game would have on my life as a gamer.
Continue reading Hydlide - Looking Into the Face of History
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The MechAssault games released on the original Xbox represent one of the last pushes of the BattleTech franchise towards mainstream popularity. With all past successful games released on PC, it seems obvious that publisher Microsoft and developer Day 1 Studios (with some input by FASA Interactive) wanted a fresh reboot in the form of a new francise, one that would be playable only one Microsoft's new Xbox console system. But would this even be possible in a market that seemingly didn't give a rip about Western-style robot sims?
Continue reading MechAssault - The Review
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No doubt many of you Steam gamers have noticed the new feature available on Steam: In-Home Steaming - The ability to stream games between computers on your home network, a feature that I've been waiting for. Sure it has been available for a while (through Steam Beta opt in), but it just wasn't viable until now. But now we can play our Steam libraries remotely, provided your home network isn't a stinker. Also, those of us who choose a non-Windows OS can finally play all of our Steam games without the need for often messy compatibility layer software (Wine, PlayOnLinux/PlayOnMac, etc.). A dream come true. There are some bugs, but the overall goal of the project has certainly realized.
Continue reading Stream Steam Games Over Your Network... And More?
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