Forgotten Old Games – Colony Wars: Vengeance

Hi everyone! Today, I’ve chosen a great spaceship simulator from Sony Playstation, it’s Colony Wars: Vengeance.

Hum… The right thing to do was probably make a review of the entire Colony Wars franchise, however I don’t like the third game “Red Sun” and the second game is my favorite, so here we go!

Before I start talking about the plot, I would like to mention that both this game and the first one have a lot of endings, therefore, a lot of plot variations, so I’m just going to summarize the “winning plot”.

The League of the Free Worlds, who were the good guys of the first game, were able to liberate mankind from the Tzar Empire, with the exception of  the Sol system (our system, to be exact), so instead of going in there, they just sealed the entire Sol system from the rest of the galaxy, leaving it at its own fate. As the years pass, Sol starts to become very poor and society begins to crumble.

So, in desperate need of a leader who would reunite them all, Kron, an enigmatic figure, rises promising vengeance against the League of the free worlds. Using fanaticism and building a fleet called New Navy, he is able to reopen Sol’s warp hole, and so begins another Colony Wars.

As you may have guessed by now, you play with the “bad guys” from the last game. Player’s character is called Mertens, and he is part of the so-called New Navy, whom proves to be one of the most important pilots of the plot, unleashing a lot of plot twists, some even envolving Kron.

This leads to even more plot twists, I mean, this game’s plot is great, and you should see how it unravels by yourself, I’m not giving you any spoilers for this one.

The controls look a bit complicated at first glance,  as you know, this looks more like a space ship simulator then a 3D shoot ’em up and it reminds me of the Wing Commander game or Freelancer, but it’s nothing extremely complicated as the X’ series.

You have access to three types of weapons at the beginning of the game, one is for Shields, which is not very effective against the hull, another is for destroying the hull, which obviously wont cause much damage against a ship’s shields, and the last one is for collecting minerals, which is a “sword” like beam, you’ll be using them all the time, and as the game progress, you’ll be unlocking new weapons, including a hook gun that allows you to grab stuff in space.

shield disable gun

laser gun

mining laser

hook

You also have Foward and Backward thrusters, and when you use both of them at the same time, you activate Afterburners (which, by the way, have a very nice effect) and in no time at all you’ll be participating in some cool dogfights.

Missions are very well done. While in most console spaceship games player only advance going straight ahead, destroying everything  in screen untill you reach a boss, in this game missions range from gathering materials of asteroids, destroying huge space ships, scouting freighters, uploading viruses to satellites, rescuing ships from hostile and much more, and just like I said before, this game has a lot of endings which are influenced by these missions.

 That is why I think it falls more like in the simulation category than in the “3D shooter” category.

Not to mention the game’s great physics, you can notice it when you use the grappling hook, destroy a vessel and it’s bits fly off like they were in space, or the way your ship behaves floating like it’s actually in space, very well done indeed.

The graphics are amazing, the ships are extremely well done, high quality models, with minor details, specially in large frigates, you can gaze the space scenes and planetary surfaces, for they are very cool, also this game offers a lot of nice effects, like the gloom effect, which is used a lot, gives you the sensation that there is really a huge vessel exploding right in front of you, or that the sun is really burning, it’s very awesome.

The CGi scenes are well done too, and believe me when I say there’s a lot of them in this game, which adds to the experience.

The sounds and musics are awesome, specially the intro music, you can actually feel the drama they are living, that combined with the already mentioned CGs.

Sound is pretty good too, with good sound effects and voice actors.

I’m just going to leave the intro for you, so you can admire both the CG and the incredible music, as for that beggining, I believe it’s Kron crashing into Earth, you’ll understand what I’m talking about when you play the game, and believe me, it is awesome.

‎”The urge to survive is strong, but if it hadn’t been for Kron we would have given up long ago.”

Forgotten Old Games – Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

Hi everyone, this week we have a very special game! This game, at least in my opinion, was one of the best ones between the 3D adventures from 32/64 bit era.

Today, I´m gonna talk about Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, one of my favorite Playstation games!

Soul Reaver was released in 1999 for Playstation and PC and later in 2000 was ported to Sega Dreamcast. The version that I´m gonna review is the Playstation version because that´s the version that I have played back them. (However the screenshots are from the PC version, they´re pretty much the same thing excepted for the fact that the Playstation version has a lower resolution and some pop in objects.)

This game is the sequel of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, but instead of being a top down RPG as Blood Omen, Soul Reaver is a 3D action adventure. The plot take place 1500 years after Blood Omen in an era where vampires rule the earth leaded by they great leader Kain.

You pick up the role of Raziel, the general of Kain´s vampiric army, who surpass his master Kain turning into a more evolved vampire with big wings.

In an act of jealousy, Kain tear Raziel wings apart and thrown him into the lake of the dead. After many centuries Raziel is resurrected by an elder god. However, Raziel reborn as a deformed wraith.

The elder god tells Raziel that the world is falling apart because of Kain´s madness and give him the mission to kill Kain in order to reestablish the world balance and fulfill Raziel´s vengeance.

Damn, this game´s plot is awesome! Holly crap, generally I don´t care much about plots, but holly crap this game has an awesome story with awesome characters!

You can also check this game amazing introduction here:

Soul Reaver´s gameplay is pretty simple for an adventure, but this is not a complain, after all, that make things a lot easier to handle. You move your character using your D-PAD, jump with X, attack and active stuff  with SQUARE, feed with CIRCLE and grab/throw/impale things with TRIANGLE. To crouch use L1 and to lock an enemy target use R1, you can also rotate your camera with L2 and R2. Ah, I almost forgot to tell, in Soul Reaver you have to absorb souls to replenish your energy, so after you kill an enemy, keep pressing CIRCLE to make Raziel absorb enemy’s souls.

There´s no death in Soul Reaver, after all, Raziel is already dead. So when you run out of  HP, you´ll become a spirit and leave the material world and enter in the spirit world.

That´s another feature of this game, in order to solve some puzzles you´ll have to switch between material world and spirit world, that´s kinda cool because the world morphs around you in real-time, there´s no loading screen or something like that. You can change to the spirit world anytime however to go back to the material world you´ll need to find some blue portals that allows you to return to the material plan. When you´re in the spirit world you cannot open doors or collect weapons, after all you became a spirit, a ghost that cannot interfere in the material world, or at least not directly.

Your enemies are not immortal however they´re hard to kill, in the material world most part of your enemies are vampires or vampire creatures, in order to destroy them you have to beat the crap out of them and them throw them into the fire/sunlight or even water, or you can impale them with a spear or throw them into spikes, this is the only way to kill them, speaking about spears Raziel can use lots of objects as a weapon, you can use spears, torches or even rocks to attack enemies.

As you progress you´ll receive more abilities like climbing walls and even the ability to use a cool energy sword called Soul Reaver.

During your quest you´ll be able to collect HP expansions in a way very similar to The legend of Zelda where you collect pieces of heart to increase your total health, in Soul Reaver you have to collect 5 parts to increase your total HP. You´ll also have to look for Glyphs. Glyphs are some king of relic that grants you extra powers like pull enemies away. Soul Reaver feature lots of combat however combat is not the main objective in this game, this is an exploration/puzzle solving game, so be prepared for lots of puzzles. The first boss battle is something like a puzzle so this´s not a Devil May Cry like game, it´s more like a dark and twisted version of Zelda.

You can save your game anywhere however every time that you start the game you´ll respawn at the first room of the game, but you can use portals to teleport between areas, you only have to find those portals during the game so you´ll not loose your time travelling from point A to point B, this system works from a similar way to those portals from Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

Well these are the most important aspects of Soul Reaver´s gameplay, I hope that I´ve covered everything that really matters, if I forgot something important I´m sorry, Soul Reaver is a very rich game and sometimes I find myself lost with so many things to tell…

Now let´s talk about the graphics…

Soul Reaver has one of the best graphics that I ever saw on the Playstation, I thing that is one of the most beautiful 3D game from the 32/64 bit era, it really impresses me even today. It´s a good example of how 3D games can be beautiful without lots of polygons, advanced shaders, physics and stuff. I really like the characters models, they´re very well made, Raziel and Kain looks awesome and monsters really looks like horrible creatures, the only models that I didin´t like too much are the human models, they´re are not so well done like the rest of the creatures and characters, I think that´s because there is a city with lots of them walking around and they cannot spare so much process power.

Backgrounds are amazing , with nice textures and cool details, there are lots of flags that really moves like fabric and the way that torches cast light in the dark areas are great too.

The opening FMV is awesome, it´s very well done it´s a shame that we have FMV only in that part, the rest of the game feature real-time cut scenes that are pretty good however I really wanted to see more videos like that.

Sound and music are amazing too, the voice actors are great, Raziel´s voice is really cool, I think that the way that Raziel tells his story resembles a lot the prince from Prince of Persia Sands of Time.  Sound effects are great but music is suberb, I really like the tunes specially the music that plays when you´re Raziel´s clan Territory.

So that´s conclude my review today, I really hope that everyone that haven´t played Soul Reaver go and give it a try, it´s an amazing game and I know LOTS of people who never heard a word about it. It really impress me how a such amazing game became overlooked like this. I hope that Eidos “resurrect” this awesome series in future. Now go my friends and become Soul Reavers, angels of death!

Forgotten Old Games – Die Hard Trilogy

Yippee-ki-yay, mot#$@$! Today our guest of honor is John McClane in one of his most bad-ass cops from the movies in one of the greatest action classics from PS1, Die Hard Trilogy, a game that contain three different games.

The first is “Die Hard”, a 3rd person shooter based on the first movie, on which McClane has to save his Wife and a bunch of hostages from terrorists in Nakatomi Plaza.
Them we have “Die Hard 2”, a 1st person shooter on rails, similar to Virtual Cop and based on the second movie. This time, McClane need to stop a bunch of terrorist that have taken control of an airport.
And Finally “Die Hard With a Vengeance” with a gameplay similar toe Crazy Taxi. The game is based on the third movie, when McClane has to disarm bombs around New York in a race against time.
As you can see, the three games are very different from each other, making Die Hard Trilogy a complete action pack.
I´ll try to talk about the main aspects of each game like gameplay, graphics and sound.
In “Die Hard” we have to advance at each floor of Nakatomi Plaza, shooting some bad guys, rescuing hostages and getting a lot of guns. There´s a lot of different weapons in this game, like  handguns, grenades, shotguns, machineguns etc.
The main objective of each stage is to locate all the hostages and release them. After you release everyone, a bomb will be activated and you´ll have 30 seconds to find the bomb. If you don’t reach the bomb in time, the entire floor will explode and then “bye-bye cowboy”. I almost forget to mention that this game is full of McClane lines, like “Yippee-ki-yay”.
Those lines add a lot of fun in the game, the music is great too.
In terms of graphics they´re pretty decent for it´s time, but the characters looks like paper. Maybe because the environment can be destructed, there´s a lot of interaction with the environment, so maybe they try to reduce the number of polygons in-game to maintain this feature.
This first game is the most deep and complex of all three.

“Die Hard 2” it´s a total arcade like shooting game and you have a lot of weapons too, like rockets, machineguns and a Beretta pistol. You´ll need it after all there´s dozens of bad guys to shoot, and you have to
be carefull to no shot the civilians, sometimes it´s hard to shoot only in bad guys because there´s a lot of people around the airport.
The graphics are basically the same as in “Die Hard” but the scenario is more detailed.Also, they have a lot of stuff to blow up to.
I don´t have much to say about “Die Hard 2”, it´s a very fun shooting game, and becomes perfect if you have a Playstation light gun.

“Die Hard With a Vengeance” it´s a total carnage. You have to drive your car with your friend Zeus Carver in a race against time to disarm bombs around the city. It´s the most difficult of all the three, at least for me.
There´s a lot of people on the street and it´s difficult to avoid them while trying to get to the bombs at time.
There are also items, like time expansion and a turbo item. The Turbo allows you to run faster and it´s very useful to pursue “bomb cars”. Those bomb cars are like bosses in this game, they have a health bar
and you have to crash them to do some damage.

Besides the difficult, it´s a very fun game, specially the conversations between McClane and Zeus Carver.
I think graphics are pretty good for a PS1, since it’s an open city with a lot of people and cars on the streets. The details are nice too, like if you run over people, they let blood in the windshield, what is very disturbing but nice touch.

I really wish to talk more about Die Hard Trilogy, but it´s difficult to tell every little detail about this great action pack, so it´s up to you to do the rest and play this awesome game!