When I think of the best levels in the best video games I’ve ever played, one of the first that comes to mind is the Shalebridge Cradle level from Thief: Deadly Shadows. You’ve got to play through 80% of the game before you’ll see the game’s penultimate level, but it’s worth it. I’ve seen some fairly well done haunted houses in video games – the one in Vampire: Bloodlines comes to mind – but it’s nothing compared to the Shalebridge Cradle.

The Shalebridge Cradle began as an orphanage, and later became an insane asylum. Think of John Cusack’s 1408, with a little bit of The Shining, and some Thirteen Ghosts thrown in for flavor. That will get you halfway there.

I don’t have the writing acumen to accurately describe how well-designed The Shalebridge Cradle truly is. But in March 2005, PC Gamer Magazine wrote a ten-page article about it. A single level of a single game. Ten pages. And the article (pdf) should give you a good feel for what I’m trying to convey in my sonnet.

And now, my ode to the Shalebridge Cradle

Behind a rusted gate it looms immense
A sinister abandoned old estate
My heart feels crushed as if beneath a weight
As I peer up at stark malevolence

With heightened pulse I slowly step inside
And wait in vain for crushing fear to pass
Beneath The Cradle’s black foreboding mass
I feel my trepidations amplified

Forsaken children once wandered these halls
Mingling with the criminally insane
The wrongness of thy history brings pain
But gems and silver treasure herein calls

So long I’ve been the monster in the night
Crouched in shadow, knife or club in hand
Yet these inhuman puppets you command
Fill even this monster’s soul with fright

Evil resides within these halls malign
Canst be no shadows deadlier than thine

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.

I don’t know how it’s possible, but I hadn’t heard of EasyTutu until just this weekend. This project is completely made of win. It’s developed by the Pocket Plane Group, and the bottom line is that it takes the Baldur’s Gate 2 engine, and lets you play Baldur’s Gate 1 with all the enhancements of the sequel. This means BG2’s improved interface, kit classes like Sorcerers, Monks, and Bounty Hunters, and 1280×1024 resolution.

But unfortunately, I’m running Windows Vista, and Windows Vista hates old games. I’ve recently managed to get Thief 3: Deadly Shadows running on my Vista Machine, but it’s a wonky prospect, and functions only barely, with a lot of bugs. Luckily, I’ve recently gotten Microsoft Virtual PC running on my machine, and installed an old copy of XP Home. I’m still working on getting a Windows 98 virtual PC running to check out a copy of Clive Barker’s Undying that I bought on EBay, but in the meantime, the XP Virtual machine works great, and I spent the time today to install what I needed to get the EasyTutu version of Baldur’s Gate up and running. I’m loving it.

I started a multiplayer game, and created a barbarian and an archer. I picked up Imoen, Khalid, and Jahiera, and am ready to hit Nashkel. In the past, every time I’ve tried playing the game, I hit a crash bug when entering the Nashkel mine, but I’ve got a feeling that now that I’m playing with Tutu, I’ll be able to circumvent the bug, and that this will be my first full replay of Baldur’s Gate since I first played about a decade ago.

Installing EasyTutu is pretty easy if you follow their instructions. Install Baldur’s Gate, Sword Coast, and the patch, then install Baldur’s Gate 2, the expansion, and the patch. Then install EasyTutu. The whole process is somewhat time-consuming, but worth it when you can play a game that was originally intended for 640×480 resolution in hi-res fullscreen on your 32″ flat panel monitor.

A couple nights ago, I decided to reinstall Thief 3: Deadly Shadows and give it another spin. The only catch: I’m running Windows Vista, and old games can be very iffy on this OS.

My problem was that after installing, any time I tried to run the game, I got the following error:

(Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library)
Runtime Error!
Program: C:\Program Files\Thief – Deadly Shadows\System\t3.exe
abnormal program termination

When this happened, the cursor would get stuck as a spinning CD, which normally indicates that the computer is accessing the CD. Only this time, it would stay that way until I restarted the machine. I don’t think I could open the CD tray either.

After a few hours of mucking about, I finally got the thing to run, even though some parts are a bit buggy. I figured I’d share all the steps I took to get it to run in Vista. I’m fairly sure that not all of these steps were necessary, but I’ll list everything I did just in case.

1- First, I should mention that I’ve had UAC turned off for a long time now. I never had any trouble with malware in XP, and the UAC was actually preventing me from running a lot of my software, besides being very annoying. According to this page, it’s important that if you turn UAC off, you do it before installing the game. If you’re installing the game, you might also find this tweak guide useful.

2- After installing, I downloaded and ran the Thief Deadly Shadows v1.1 patch.

3- I don’t think that this is any part of the fix, but I downloaded and installed John P.’s Thief Deadly Shadows texture pack.

4- I downloaded and implemented the no CD patch. I don’t feel guilty about it, since I legally purchased the game and I’m just trying to get it to work.

5- I right-clicked t3.exe, visited the compatibility tab, and set it to XP(SP2) compatibility mode. This was actually one of the first things I tried, but by itself it didn’t fix my problem. In the end, this step didn’t even matter for me, since I used the no cd exe rather than this one, and I haven’t set any compatibility on the no-cd exe.

6- Here’s one I put off until the end because I was hoping not to have to do it. I disabled DEP. Following the instructions in this forum thread, I went to a command prompt, typed bcdedit.exe /set {current} nx AlwaysOff, and rebooted.

7- Lastly, when I actually run the game, I right click the no cd exe and pick “run as administrator”. Yeah, it’s a pain to do it this way, but the game runs. I should re-emphasize that I don’t have compatibility set for this exe, not that I’m sure whether that matters.

Here’s the other quirky thing. During every loading screen, this error pops up.

Every time a loading screen pops up, the machine goes back to the desktop and I see the error again. When this happens, don’t go within five feet of the mouse or keyboard. Just step away. The game will continue. The one time I clicked OK on the message, the game crashed. If you don’t touch anything, the game should continue normally.

Hopefully, this article helps someone else get the game running on Vista. It’s a heck of a pain, but Thief: Deadly Shadows is a great game, so it’s worth it.

I’m replaying Beyond Good & Evil for the (don’t laugh at me) fifth time with Brainy Gamer‘s Vintage Game Club. It’s true – I’ve played the game four times before, and purchased four copies of the game over the years. But about a year ago, when I made a list of my favorite 51 games of all time, Beyond Good & Evil took the number 1 spot in fierce competition with Half-Life 2. So the question then is why Beyond Good & Evil is my absolute favorite game of all time.

I can tell you for sure that it’s for more than one reason. It’s not that the game doesn’t have flaws. If you wanted to poke holes in the plot, it’d be as easy as poking holes in a paper wall. The camera control is problematic at times to say the least. And given that the game is now six years old, the graphics are quickly becoming dated, even when I can crank the game up to a 1680×1050 resolution. (and I like the 1680×1050 resolution very much, thank you.)

But the game has a variety of gameplay seldom seen in games today. It’s got combat, it’s got puzzles, it’s got stealth gameplay, it’s got vehicular combat and racing, it’s got minigames, it’s got the photography sidequests, and it’s got collection of pearls and MDisks. Personally, my favorite portion of the game is the stealth gameplay – I tend to be a sucker for that.

And just as important as the gameplay variety are the game’s characters, which really make the game shine. The relationship that you can see between Jade and her adopted uncle Pey’j really stands out, in no small part because of the game’s excellent voice acting.

It’s funny that on my 5th playthrough, I’m still noticing new things. For me, at this, point, the novelty is completely gone, but going back to play the game is like going back to watch a favorite old movie, and I’ll never tire of watching films like Empire Strikes Back. Neither do I imagine that I will tire of Beyond Good & Evil.

The last (4th) time I played through the game, I was on a completionist kick, and I got every pearl, a photograph of every animal, and every MDisk. This time, I was on a speed playthrough, and let a bunch of it go.

(Spoilers follow – if you’ve not played the game, you need to go drop ten bucks and buy it)

On question that I’m left with after finishing the game is what exactly is going on with Jade? General Kex at the end of the game says that “he” has been searching for Jade for centuries. Are we supposed to believe then that Jade is in actuality some ancient being? On the other hand, Secundo notes after the game’s very first fight that “Something got inside (Jade’s) psycho-karma”. Despite not knowing what the frell “psycho-karma” is, this always led me to believe that some kind of infection began only here rather than with Jade’s origin centuries earlier.

But the end speech is lengthy and convincing. “You are not who you think you are. The pig has hidden your origins from you. You are the source of my powers, the instrument of my strength. They took you away in the hope of destroying me. They made you human, but you are not like them.”

The ending of the game after all this leaves me feeling very much like I did after the end of the first Matrix movie, where we’re given a feel of Neo’s powers, but don’t understand them. What is this “prodigous energy” Jade posesses, and what are its applications and implications? Ancel has a lot to explain in Beyond Good and Evil 2, and I can only hope that he does a much better job than the Wachowskis did in Matrix Reloaded.