Sonic: Then & Now

I decided to take a look at 2 games from the same series. I have played some Sonic games, but never the very first one for the Sega Genesis and haven't yet tried the newer one for the Xbox 360/PS3. The games were made 15 years apart, the first in 1991 and the other in 2006.

Anyways, you play as a blue hedgehog, Sonic, and have to save the animals, called Flicky, from an evil doctor, Robotnik/Eggman. You run across different levels getting rings and saving the Flicky, at the end of each world (set of levels) you get to fight Dr. Robotnik. It's a fun game but very hard since you only get a few lives to start (getting more is hard too) and if you run out off rings and get hurt you will die. When you run out of lives, its game over and you have to start from the beginning, there are no continues or save points it seems. For how old the games is the graphics really aren't too bad and wont keep you from being able to play it. This one may not be the best original Sonic game, but the next couple in the series are great offering more characters and more of a story to go on.

The newer Sonic game lets you again control the blue hedgehog, Sonic, but now its in a 3D world (like with most Sonic games after the Sega Genesis). This time you have to save a princess from Dr. Eggman/Robotnik. You also have Sonic's friend from the second genesis game, Tails, a two-tailed fox, helping you for some of the game. The cut scenes are well done graphically, but the story is strange (not to say the first one wasn't also). The mechanics for fighting enemies are really hard to use at first; its not like before where you just jump at them. Its pretty easy to get killed and a pain to have to start form the last checkpoint. The game overall is fun, just a bit to hard to control. I would stick to playing the original ones, for the ease of control alone.

Rising and Revenge

This time I decided to play an the Xbox 360 game, "Dead Rising", and another Atari 2600 game, "Yars' Revenge." These games really have no common themes, I just picked them out for fun.

Anyways, Yars' Revenge is a very strange game, the first time I played it I thought my Atari was breaking. The story behind the game is that you are a Yar trying to protect you home plant (Planet V) from Qotile. You play as what looks like a fly (a Yar) and you have to destroy a spaceship (or at least I assume it is). I was unable to get past the second level and also have yet to figure out what the colorful bar in the middle of the screen is (that made me thing my Atari had broken). This game gets boring after about 2 to 5 minutes of play. The graphics aren’t the worst for the Atari 2600, but that’s all this game really has going for it. I'd recommend playing this if you are up to the challenge of figuring out what the bar in the middle of the screen is, but thats about it.

In Dead Rising you play Frank, a photojournalist, who goes to a mall in a town infested with zombies to get the story on what is happening. In the game you goal is to stay alive for 72 game hours and complete as many "missions" as possible. While exploring the mall, you can kill the zombies with just about anything and everything you might find in a mall. The game is very fun, the only downside is getting killed (and of course the time limit). When you die it loads back to your last save which can be very annoying since you don’t get to save very often. Also it is easy to get killed in some parts of the mall where the zombies are close together. The abilty to kill the zombies with anything can be really fun. The overall design of the game is great; the zombies are slow, as they should be, like the ghouls (zombies) in George A. Romero's ____ of the Dead series; except for at night, then the zombies start getting a bit more aggressive, so its sort of like the best of both types of zombies. Anyways, if you like zombies and challenging games you will love Dead Rising, unless of course you keep dying over and over again...then it just kinda gets really annoying.

Adventure and Zelda

Since I've been really busy, I haven't had a chance to play and evaluate any games since my first post, so I will probably have multiple posts over break to make up for it.

The first 2 games I played were "Adventure" for the Atari 2600 and "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" for the Nintendo GameCube (and Wii). Both are adventure games created about 23 years apart from one another. The time difference really shows any possible way you look at it.

In Adventure you are a cube that has to find the enchanted chalice and bring it to the golden castle. You have to find keys to two castles and slay bird-like dragons, while going though a maze. The game is really strange to play since the movement is difficult with the joystick and the maze isnt very wide. You must move from the golden castle with an item that appears to be a sword. You must travel the maze to find the Black castle and bring back the chalice, at which point I think you win, it dosent really tell you. Overall, this game is pretty bad. The graphics are horrible and the colors off. It olny takes about 10 mins to play and is really more annoying then fun, there is just to many better Atari games to play.

In The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker you play a young boy, on a small island, who's sister has been kidnapped by a griant bird and brought to the forbidden fortress. So you leave your island to find her, traveling from island to island to get to her. In the game you learn to control the wind and change it's direction to help sail on your small sailboat. Along the way you have to go through dungeons and fight bosses on each island. Anyways, this game is pretty good. Its really fun to play and the cell shaded graphics are really neat. It takes alot longer then 1omins to beat and has so much more to do than Adventure.

Introdution

Hello, my name is Lauren Clements and I am a writer for the Lions' Roar, the student newspaper for Normandale Community College (NCC). In this blog I will be talking about video games, both classic and current. I intend to explain my experiences with playing them from the perspective of a girl with preferably little exposure to the chosen game. I hope to broaden my video game experiences and hopefully expose others to games they normally may not play or even know of. I will touch on the history, gameplay, and general evaluations of various games. I plan to choose 2 games available to me, one from past generations systems and one from the current ones.