40-Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (Arkane Studios, Windows, 2008)

Dark Messiah was panned in reviews because the plot was lame and predictable, and because the voice acting was sub-par. I won’t disagree with these assessments. But even so, there’s a lot to like about the game. The set pieces were easily as impressive as those in Oblivion and Half-Life 2. It was spectacular to watch from a first-person perspective as a twelve foot tall cyclops smashed a city gate to splinters and charged in, raking aside the city’s defenders and wreaking havoc.

The game also boasts a better first person melee system than Oblivion and a very good classless skill tree. The stealth gameplay was well done (and optional) and the game encourages you to make use of the environment during battles by placing a lot of destructible and throwable objects. Plus, defenestrating orcs is just plain fun.

39-Point Blank (Namco, Arcade, 1994)

It’s somewhat surprising that there’s been no Wii version of Point Blank given the cartoony light gun goodness that the game represents. My favorite aspect of the game was its variety. In some levels, you’d be shooting paper cutout ninjas, in others you’d be firing at targets which you had to hit in order one through twelve in under five seconds, and in other screens you might be protecting Dr. Dan and Dr. Don from oncoming tanks or an erupting volcano or invading aliens. Before the Wii, Point Blank was fun for very much the same reasons that the Wii later gained popularity. I still have my Playstation copy of Point Blank, and I still have my light guns. I’ll tell you – those old style light guns work way better than the Wii remotes for shooting accurately. Writing about it now makes me want to pull them back out.

38-Mariokart Wii (Nintendo, Nintendo Wii, 2008)
My introduction to the MarioKart series came very late: the first Mariokart game I ever played was MarioKart DS. But although I did play that game multiplayer with friends who were across the country, it wasn’t until I played Kart on the Wii with my wife that I really grew to love it. People may speak fondly of Mariokart 64, but I think that’s largely because it was their first exposure to the kart racing genre. For me, it’s all about Mariokart Wii.

37-Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (Hothead Games, Windows, 2008)

I’m lumping the first and second title in the series together here since they were moreso “part 1” and “part 2” than they were separate games. I’m a big fan of Penny Arcade’s sense of humor – I’ve been following Penny-Arcade.com for many years, and seen them rise from a simple webcomic to a gaming empire.

Their game is an over-the-top RPG where your three characters are battling robots, hobos, mimes, and barbershop quartets with fists and garden implements. A lot of the humor is very R-rated, but it’s truly hilarious.

36-Thief: Deadly Shadows (Ion Storm, Windows, 2004)

I’ve gotten a lot of flak for liking this game better than the original Thief game, but I think my preference is based largely on the fact that it’s difficult for me to go back to such an old game if I’ve not played it before. Nostalgia’s glasses do much to mute the imperfections of a game’s old age. After six years, even Deadly Shadows is now showing its age – the platforming is difficult to stomach, you can get stuck on the environment, and compatibility with newer operating systems is iffy at best. But control tweaks and texture packs help, and levels like Shalebridge Cradle make the game worth playing despite its flaws.

I came up with three game enemies that have terrified me. Keep in mind that these are not video game chase scenes – that’s a different list entirely.

Fallout 2: The Enclave
Just after you help a bunch of ghouls repair their broken nuclear reactor, you end up in a chat with a member of The Enclave – an organization whose members all wear advanced power armor at a time when you may still be in leather armor. The following video shows the conversation. In retrospect, it doesn’t seem terrifying at all, but at the time when I was playing it, I remember thinking *oh shit* – *oh shit* …and yeah… this video is not safe for work. At all.

Dark Messiah of Might & Magic: The Cyclops
In Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, throughout the course of the game, there are a few segments in which you fight a cyclops. They’re big, bad, and ugly. The guy fighting the cyclops here was all about showing how good he is at fighting it, so it never actually picks him up, but when that thing grabbed me, picked me up, and roared in my face, I think I may have screamed back at it in fear.

Resident Evil 2: the T-103
Yes – this is a game moment I’ve written about many many times before. It is simply epic. The following clip doesn’t do it justice, mainly because the guy playing obviously isn’t as scared as I was, and also because he hangs out in the inventory screen long enough to kill the mood. I didn’t stop to shoot at the T-103. I just ran my ass off.

Start watching no later than 7:30. You’ll want to keep watching until at least 9:30 for the good part.

5 – Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

Fairly early on in the game, a ghoul steals an important artifact, and to catch him you’ve got to do a poor man’s parkour across rooftops, through windows, and across rickety scaffolding to catch it. While the ghoul is climbing walls and leaping twenty feet through the air, you need to resort to climbing ladders and leaping two foot gaps between wooden planks. Being forced to take a far more circuitous route and leap before you look makes the chase frantic, and I personally plunged to my death at least a half dozen times. But once you learn the route you need to take and are racing along, the chase is indeed exhilirating.

Watch the Ghoul Chase from Dark Messiah of Might & Magic

4 – Enter the Matrix

I don’t remember very much detail about the gameplay in Enter the Matrix. The game was most notable for its FMV sequences with footage that was filmed at the same time and with the same actors that were in Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. But once part that I remember quite well is being chased by an agent early in the game. If you remember the opening scene in the first Matrix movie, Trinity was in a frenzied flight from an agent. The sequence from the game captured that feeling perfectly – you’ve got to run as fast as you can, and you have absolutely no chance to look back. If you look behind you, you die. It’s the most frantic chase scene in any game I’ve ever played.

3 – Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Overall, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was a frustrating game. A bug prevented me from even completing it. But the first real action in the game, before you have any weapons, is a scene where you’re running from townsfolk who want to kill you. You’re staying in an inn, and you’ve locked your door, but you’ve only got a few seconds before the townies break it down. You move to the adjacent room and push a bookcase in front of the door to block it, then start working on opening the window to get out. This is the beginning of an insane chase that constitutes the only really well crafted part of this game. Very memorable.

Watch the Call of Cthulhu chase

2 – Gravity Bone

It’s very possible that you’ve never heard of Gravity Bone. It’s not an actual commercially available full game. It’s a short, free, downloadable game that I’ve featured on Free Game Friday. But it’s one of the best Free Game Friday games I’ve ever covered. If it were a full game, I’d buy it in a minute. The first level is a 2-minute romp. The second is fun but not phenomenal… until the end. The twist is brilliant and unexpected, and leads to an amazing chase with an equally unexpected ending. I loved it. You can link to the video below, or better yet – download and play the game.

Watch the Gravity Bone chase (skip to 3:30)

1 – Beyond Good and Evil

I’m sure that the people of Lungfishopolis wish by now that I’d shut up about Beyond Good and Evil. I try to keep my raving to a minimum, but when I thought of chases in games, this is simply the best. The cinematic chase near the end of Beyond Good and Evil breaks the rules of the game by changing the camera angle multiple times and intercutting slow-motion mini-cut-scenes in a way that results in a beautiful foot chase. At one point, you’re actually running directly towards the camera, which seems odd until you realize that in that point of the chase, dodging projectiles thrown by your pursuers is more important than dodging upcoming obstacles.

Watch the chase from Beyond Good and Evil

The most recent example is Trine. The game immediately interested me, since the puzzle/platforming multiplayer co-op sounded like exactly the type of game my wife and I would enjoy playing together. Downloading the Steam demo sealed the deal. While I may have bought the game without having tried the demo, the demo removed all doubt. I now plan to play the game when (and if) it’s ever released on PSN.

Trine PC Demo

A game that I likely would never have bought without trying the demo is Pixeljunk Monsters. Like many other PSN demos, I downloaded it on a whim and it probably sat on my Playstation’s hard drive for a week before I even installed it. When I started playing it, my initial take was that the music was a little annoying and the graphics were too cartoony. But as I do with most demos, I decided to play through to the end before making any kind of decision. The game got addictive. The music was actually catchy. And I wanted more levels. I’ve now grown to love Pixeljunk Monsters, and it’s without doubt the game I’ve put the most time into on my Playstation 3.

Plants versus Zombies was a similar story. While it sounded cute, I expected it to be very much like the Peggle and Bookworm Adventures demos I’d tried: fun, but not worth buying.

After completing the demo levels, I had to play the full game. And it turned out to be the only game I’ve ever played on which I’ve completed every single achievement.

Plants vs Zombies Demo

The last demo that’s floated its way into my mind – I nearly forgot about this one – is the demo for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It was a lot of fun. I got caught up in the stealth upgrades and in kicking orcs and goblins off of cliffs. The game was rated horribly, so I didn’t buy it immediately, but when I saw it in a Target for $12.50, I snatched it up with no hesitation. And it’s a keeper. You can get it on Steam now for even less than that.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Demo

Now I’ll grant you – not all demos are representative of the actual game. The Playstation 3 demo for Resident Evil 5 was terrible, but the game was actually pretty good. The Playstation 3 demo for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was excellent, but the game itself was horrible and frustrating.

In closing, I can’t write about demos without mentioning the venerable but hilarious demo for Typing of the Dead, which is still available here, especially after having read such a well-written article about the game last week.

Even if you’re not a fan of Steam like I am, they’ve got a deal this weekend too good to pass up. Four games for $9.99 – that means you’re getting some great games for $2.50 each.

Three of the four games here are ones I’ve talked about before on this site, and they definitely fall within my “keepers” category. Firstly, Far Cry. This is the original PC version, far different from the console versions. Even if you think you might not like it – it’s only $2.50!

Secondly, Beyond Good and Evil, which I’ve raved about far more than I ever should have. I won’t gush more in this post, but it’s worth significantly more than the $2.50 you’d pay for a box of string cheese. I’ve bought four copies over the years, and played it 5 times.

Third, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. While it had its minor annoyances, I really enjoyed the gameplay. I got the game, which was originally $50, for $12.50 at Target and jumped for joy at my bargain-hunting prowess. Later, I got another copy on the cheap from Steam. But I paid more than $2.50.

Lastly, IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946, which is some kind of flight simulator. No idea.

Anyway, if you’ve not played these games, I’d seriously jump on Steam’s weekend deal here.

Video game reviews are big business now. And while I really didn’t want to get into the games review business when I started Lungfishopolis, I feel a need to bring peoples’ attention to a few games which got a lot of terrible reviews, but which I found to be very good games. I’ve played all but one of them more than once, and I’ll likely go back and play most of them again. I’m silly like that.

Firstly, Enter the Matrix. It got an abysmal Metascore of 58, but I remember liking it. I haven’t replayed it for perspective, and I remember hating many of the driving sequences, but the combat was fun. Running up walls and diving through the air in bullet-time while shooting at enemies, then beating the snot out of them in over-the-top hand to hand is a lot of fun. The hovercraft-piloting segment was just plain stupid and broken, but that was at the very end of the game such that you could completely skip it and miss nothing.

You got to play the role of either Niobe or Ghost, and in a design choice similar to Resident Evil 2, this gave you two separate angles on the same story, adding to replay value. In the car segments, Niobe always drives and Ghost always shoots, so you’re either only shooting or only driving.

By far the best part of the game is the movie footage. They filmed footage for Enter The Matrix at the same time they were filming the second and third Matrix movies, so there’s a ton of movie footage that never appeared in the films. Some of it is pretty damn good. My favorite: the scene where Ballard fights Seraph. It’s great mostly because of the fantastic quote at the end. There was a funny scene where Ghost talks about onanism too.

Another game I really enjoy is Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. PC Gamer panned it for being buggy and repetitive, and 1UP made fun of the kick mechanic and character development. But although I’ll agree that the plotline isn’t exactly inspired and the slutty demon chick is annoying, I liked Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. It has the best FPS swordplay mechanics I’ve seen – definitely better than Oblivion – and some fairly fun stealth gameplay. I actually really enjoyed the oft-maligned kick mechanic, and thought that the exhaustion meter and the fact that more powerful enemies can block a kick limited the kick enough that it was not overly powerful. The kick simply introduces a way to use the environment to your advantage. If there’s not a ledge to kick an enemy off, there may be a spiked wall or a support beam to kick him into.

I enjoyed Dark Messiah’s environments and level design, and really had a lot of fun sniping enemies from a distance with my bow. And somehow, sneaking up behind an orc and stabbing him in the neck or kicking him off a thousand-foot cliff just never gets old. There were some fairly intense chase sequences early in the game which at first annoyed the crap out of me. Somehow, going back through the game a second time, I’m not finding them nearly as bad.

I started replaying the game not long ago, and although I stopped when I started playing Crysis and Mass Effect, I’ll likely go back to it soon. Warning: I’ve heard that the console version of this game is far worse.

Next up, Fallout Tactics. First off, I’ve got to let it be known that I was huge a fan of the original two Fallout titles. The storyline and the open world were fantastic. The turn-based combat was excellent, and the only thing that (to me) could have made it better is to allow the player to control a party of characters, a la Baldur’s Gate. One of the reasons I loved Baldur’s Gate so much was because of the strategic combat. Fallout Tactics allows me that strategic combat that I crave so much.

Yeah – I’ll totally agree that the storyline isn’t nearly up to the standards of the first two games. But this game was largely about gameplay rather than story. I absolutely loved sneaking four of my men into position, having my shotgun guy lie prone and crawl around a corner into the raiders’ hut and blast him point blank, or positioning the guy with the rocket launcher up on a fire escape. Surrounding the enemy before they know you’re there is a lot of fun. And then kneeling behind a barrel or having a firefight through a window or standing in a trench for cover, trying to take out that Deathclaw before it gets close enough to rip your head off – it’s what makes the whole game fun.

I like being able to control an entire squad, and specialize the different members in different skills. Having one member who can drive the vehicles well and make tight turns, and another who can sneak up right under an enemy’s nose, a lockpicker/safecracker, and maybe a sniper. And having someone who’s good with landmines is always useful.

Temple of Elemental Evil, despite its many flaws, was a really fun game. My biggest complaints about it was that the a huge optional ending segment of the game was so buggy that I could never complete it, and that like Throne of Bhaal, the final boss is nearly unbeatable.The critics’ biggest complaints were the bugs and the complexity. There have since been many patches to fix the bugs and to correct the incorrect implementations of rules detected by a horde of D&D fanatics, but I still don’t think 100% of the bugs are gone.

Like Fallout Tactics, the biggest single thing that I liked about this game was the excellent strategic combat. It used 3rd Edition Dungeons and Dragons rules, implementing rules that many D&D players may not even have been aware of, thus the complaints about complexity. but I loved it. You could wait to delay your initiative, ready your bow so that as soon as any enemy spellcaster started casting a spell you could shoot them to interrupt it, double move, run, charge, cast a counterspell, and perform many other strategic actions. You can even craft magic items using the 3rd Edition D&D ruleset.

I’ll admit that the coolest-looking fight in the game was one of the first, against the giant frogs. Watching them jump out of the swamp and hop up to your party, then snag your wizard with its tongue and swallow him simultaneously sucked and was awesome. You lose a wizard, but hey – at this point you’re first level and you can go roll up another one. Besides, didn’t that look freaking cool when he got… digested?

Once you’re in the temple, the game lets you pit temple factions against each other and play up the intrigue and politics, but I generally just run through killing everything. And yes, I’ve replayed this game, and added all the Circle of Eight patches. There’s actually a lot of really good user-generated content too. Now that I’ve got a 3.0ghz dual core machine, I’ll probably go back at some point and see if the game plays any better.

The final game on my list is Thief: Deadly Shadows. Although it generally seems to be considered the least of the three Thief titles, it’s the only one I’ve truly loved. I’m playing it now, and loving it.

Amongst stealth games, it’s in my top five, alongside titles like Beyond Good and Evil and Tenchu: Stealth Assassins. Worth a play if you’ve never tried it.