Little Computer People
Activision (1985)

Does it ever seem like your computer has a mind of its own? Maybe it does! Activision’s Little Computer People provides computer owners with a virtual three-story house, designed to lure the computer people out of your wiring and into a hospitable habitat. Once a little person has moved into his new home he can be studied and observed, but this is no hands-off experiment. You’ll need to keep your new friend happy and fed to maintain a healthy relationship.

When Little Computer People first came out, it was difficult to explain just what kind of program it was to your friends. These days, it’s much easier — I’d simply say the game was like The Sims, but with only one sim and one location. To anyone familiar with the SimCity/SimAnt/SimEarth series of games, I’d describe it as a “SimHouse”. I might even compare the game to one of those popular “virtual pet” programs. But Little Computer People came out in 1985, prior to any of those games. Back then we lacked the vocabulary to describe (much less categorize) the game. Little Computer People was first released for the Commodore 64, quickly ported to the Apple II, and eventually found its way to Atari, Amiga, Amstrad and Sinclair computers. The game was never ported to the PC.

In Activision’s ground breaking title, you serve as a researcher for the Little Computer People Research Project. Each copy of the program comes with a virtual three-story home. The home, loaded with ammenities, is designed to “lure” a little computer person (LCP) out of your machine and onto your screen. Within a couple of minutes of loading the program, a LCP should arrive and, assuming he likes what he sees, will move right in. Activision used what they called “Digital DNA” to randomly assign your LCPs unique features, including hair color, clothing colors, and names. It’s said that no two LCP are exactly identical. Mine was named Ogden.

The virtual home included on your disk has several rooms for your LCP to explore. There’s a kitchen and dining room, a living room, a computer room, a restroom, a bedroom, and a large upstairs den. Each of these rooms contain different items for both your new friend and yourself to interact with. Little Computer People is a combination of direct interaction, exchanges and observation.

There are several keystrokes that will allow you to directly interact with your LCP’s environment. For example, CTRL-F delivers food, CTRL-W refills his water cooler, CTRL-D drops off cans of dog food (even LCPs need pets!) and so on. There are also “entertainment” related commands as well. CTRL-C calls your LCP on the phone, CTRL-P pets your LCP, and CTRL-R and CTRL-B deliver records and books to his front door. (Note that in the Commodore 64 emulator VICE, “Tab” is used instead of “CTRL”.)

Even more interesting are the things your LCP will do when you’re simply observing him. As you watch your LCP throughout the day there’s a chance he’ll put on a record and start exercising, watch television, take a nap, go to the restroom/wash his hands/brush his teeth, cook a meal, type on the computer, or any number of other random things.

Little Computer People also included a two-line text parser, which allowed you to talk directly to your LCP! As a young child, this was THE most amazing thing I had ever seen. “Ogden,” I would type, “would you please play me a song on the piano?” Ogden would look at the screen, nod in agreement, and head over to the piano. Requesting actions wasn’t always successful, but throwing in “please” and “thank you” seemed to increase your odds.

The only downside to Little Computer People is that it doesn’t take that long to see everything your LCP is capable of doing. There are only so many trips up the stairs, word games and exercise routines you can watch before you feel like you’ve seen it all. Within a couple of one hour sessions, I’d venture that gamers will have seen the majority of what their LCP is capable of. Despite that, the game retains a certain amount of magic. I was thrilled every time Ogden would go to his typewriter and type me a letter, or go down to the kitchen table and challenge me to a game of poker. Little Computer People was probably the first computer program I ever “bonded” with. It’s a fascinating program every Commodore 64 user should own.

Lego Star Wars
PS2/Xbox/GCN (2005)

The majority of my youth was split pretty evenly between playing with videogames, Star Wars toys, and Legos. Between the ages of 4 and 14 (at probably beyond), it’s safe to say that I played with at least one of those three things every single day. To say that I was predisposed to like a videogame named Lego Star Wars goes without saying. That being said, what follows is my fair, unbiased, un-fanboyish review of this game.

OH MY GOD THIS GAME RULES!

In Lego Star Wars, one or two players can play their way through the new trilogy of Star Wars films, Episodes I, II, and III. From the sandy dunes of Tattooine to the raging seas of Kamino and the bustling skies of Coruscant, Lego Star Wars takes you chronologically through all three newer Star Wars films, including the as-of-yet unreleased Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. While this review contains no spoilers, be warned that the game itself does.

Players begin the game in Episode I, Level I, with Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. In one player mode you can choose one or the other (and swap between them freely), and in two-player mode everybody gets to play. With these characters you’ll learn the basic controls. You can jump, draw your weapon/attack, put away your weapon, switch between characters, and use the Force. Items that can be Force-controlled will glow when you approach them. Throughout the game you’ll need to move objects around to build bridges, flip switches and levers, and do all perform various other tasks. The Force can also be used to shake down trees, planters, and other objects throughout the game to find hidden “studs”. Studs (Star Wars Lego coins) are collected throughout the game and can be used to purchase items in between levels (everything from fake moustaches for your characters to invincibility). In Lego Star Wars you get infinite lives, but every time you die you lose all your studs.

There are three basic types of characters – Jedi (who have lightsabers and can use the Force), Shooters (who have blasters and can use grappling hooks), and Other (droids who can open doors, for example). Many of the puzzles presented throughout the game involve simply figuring out which character to use in a particular situation. For example, you may need to use a Jedi’s Force power to build a ladder out of Legos, and then climb the ladder with a shooter to shoot a bull’s eye target, which in turn reveals a keypad that R2-D2 can use to open a portcullis. The puzzles rarely take more than a minute or two to figure out.

As you play through the game you’ll collect not only studs but Lego figures as well. You get to keep each character you encounter throughout story mode, so before long you’ll have a little drawer full of Lego people. In Story mode the game decides which characters you get to use, but if you go into free play mode you can pick any character from your stable and use them anywhere in the game (you’ll need to do this later if you plan on completing the game 100% — man can that Jar Jar jump!).

Graphics and sound are superb. All the ships, people, and objects you’ll see throughout the game are completely made of Legos. Take one too many shots from a Battle Droid and your character will explode into a pile of Lego pieces. Playing with Legos has never looked, sounded and felt so good. For the record, I own the Xbox version and rented the PS2 version and found any differences between the two negligible.

The biggest fault with Lego Star Wars is its length. With unlimited lives and simple puzzles, it shouldn’t take an adult most than an afternoon of gaming to beat the game. Completing it to 100% may take slightly more time, like say a weekend. Kids may get a bit more length out of it due to the puzzles and a few difficult jumps. My 3-year-old son has played through over half of the game so far and has had no difficulty in figuring out the controls. One really nice feature for parents is the drop-in/drop-out mode, which allows you to not only join a game by pressing start on a second controller, but also allowing you to unjoin a game and return control over to the game. This comes in handy when your kids need a quick hand in solving a puzzle or beating the blasted Pod Race and you don’t want to spend all afternoon tagging along behind them.

Despite its short length and simplistic controls, Lego Star Wars is one of the most enjoyable games I’ve picked up in quite a while. Although I was able to waltz through the entire game over a weekend, I still haven’t collected 100% of everything in the game. I highly recommend Lego Star Wars to all fans (however remote) of Legos, Star Wars, or platformers in general.

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction
PS2/Xbox/Gamecube (2005)

Within five minutes of launching this game for the first time, I had destroyed a dozen tanks with my bare fists, knocked two helicopters out of the sky by throwing boulders at them, and killed an enemy soldier by beating him to death with a cow. If that’s not a recipe for fun, I don’t know what is.

Many superhero-based videogames are as predictable and linear as the films they’re based upon. In games like Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men and even The Incredibles, you’ll have to first learn how to harness all the powers your hero is capable of (usually by working your way through a tutorial level) before heading off into the big city to face your nemesis and his hoard of evil henchmen. And in that respect, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction isn’t much different than its counterparts. Where Ultimate Destruction stands out is in the, well, ultimate destruction.

While The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is ultimately another level-based superhero game, Vivendi has gone out of their way to make the levels (which are large) as interactive as possible. If you see a rock, you can pick it up and throw it. If you see a vehicle, you can smash it. If you see a soldier, you have several options — punch him, attack him with a combo, pick him up with one hand and pummel him with the other, throw him as far as possible, or pick a target and use the poor screaming fellow as a projectile weapon. And yes, if you see a cow, you can even pick it up and use it as a weapon (melee or projectile — your choice). Once the action begins, the game plays like one big three-dimensional version of Rampage. And unlike the previous current-gen Hulk game, there are no wimpy Bruce Banner levels to be played here. This time around, it’s all about breaking stuff as the green guy.

A big plus for this game is the uncomplicated controls. While there are combos and other complicated moves which can be learned and mastered, my eight-year-old nephew did pretty well by simply button mashing his way through levels. The targeting system for throwing projectiles is simple to learn (pull the right trigger to cycle through targets) and easy to use when things get frantic. On more than one occasion my nephew would do something like pick up cars and use them as boxing gloves. When I would ask him how he did that, he would just shrug his shoulders and say, “I have no idea.” The variety of moves and weapons is so great that I often found myself surprised at what the game would let me do (tree + Hulk = batter up!).

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is a blast to play — of course, with hundreds of tanks, army men, helicopters and other enemies closing in on you, you won’t have too much time to think about it until long after you’ve quit playing. Fans of the comic books will appreciate the in-game references to characters, while casual gamers won’t need a history lesson in order to enjoy the mayhem. Hulk smash, indeed.

Easy to learn controls combined with open-ended gameplay and interactive levels make for a smashing good time. One of the best comic/superhero games available on the market.

Impossible Mission
Nintendo DS (2007)

“Another visitor! Stay awhile … staaaaaay … hey, wait a minute! Weren’t you the guy who was here 20 years ago?”

Chances are, if you were a Commodore 64 owner, it was you. It has been almost twenty-five years since Epyx released Impossible Mission for the Commodore 64, which was quickly ported to several other home computers and videogame consoles including the Apple II, Atari 7800, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Sega Master System. Followed by two sequels (Impossible Mission II and Impossible Mission: 2025), Impossible Mission is remembered not only for its innovative style of game play, but also its groundbreaking speech synthesis. Twenty-five years later, Impossible Mission (thanks to Warner Bros. and System 3) has found its way to the Nintendo DS.

The Nintendo DS port of Impossible Mission contains three modes of play — Classic, Merged, and New – although they aren’t as different as they first sound. Classic is, for all intents and purposes, a clone of the original – down to the old digitized speech. Of course it wouldn’t be a DS game if players weren’t required to use the system’s touch pad in some fashion, and this game is no exception; minor portions of the game (like accessing the in-game computer monitors to reset lifts and put robots to sleep) have been changed to utilize the handheld’s touch screen. Merged is simply the classic game but with updated graphics, and New is the same as Merged but with a choice of three different characters (just like Impossible Mission: 2025). While it sounds like buyers are getting three games, technically they’re getting one game with three skins.

…

For those unfamiliar with Impossible Mission, players must search for puzzle pieces in Elvin Atombender’s lair while avoiding killer robots, a giant electrified ball, and bottomless pits. If you manage to collect all the puzzle pieces before time runs out, they can be assembled to reveal a secret pin number which can be used to defeat Elvin. Part of Impossible Mission’s appeal is that the placement of searchable items, puzzle pieces, and even room location is randomized each time you play, so no two gaming sessions are identical. One thing that has made Impossible Mission so popular throughout the years is its combination of action (searching the rooms) combined with strategy/puzzle-solving (fitting the puzzle pieces together).

Impossible Mission stands the test of time. The room layouts are as diabolical as ever, as are Atombender’s homicidal robots. Although the cartridges three versions play virtually identical, the choice between graphic styles will please both new and retro gamers. Although Impossible Mission’s overall design may be simpler than newer platformers, it’s still a challenging game that delivers on all levels. Stay awhile, indeed.

IK+
C64, System 3 (1987)

IK+ is considered by many to be the best fighting game available for the Commodore 64, but the history leading up to the game is almost as interesting as the game itself. IK+ is actually the sequel to International Karate, released by System 3 in the UK in 1986. International Karate is a one-on-one fighting game with many similarities with Data East’s game, Karate Champ. In both games, two fighters dressed in red and white uniforms battle. Both games use the same scoring system, awarding either half or full points to successful moves and declaring the first combatant to reach two full points the winner. Both games feature a scoring judge and backgrounds featuring different locations.

System 3’s International Karate sold few enough copies that it was able to remain under Data East’s radar. Later that same year, System 3 System 3 licensed the game to Epyx for US distribution. The game was renamed World Karate Championship and became very popular — so popular, in fact, that Data East thought that the game was a rip-off of Karate Champ, and filed a lawsuit against Epyx over copyright infringement. Data East won the lawsuit, and Epyx was forced to pull World Karate Championship from store shelves. Later, a higher court reversed the decision stating that the games were similar but not identical, and Epyx began selling the game once again. Meanwhile, System 3 was hard at work on the game’s sequel, IK+.

In IK+, System 3 set out to create a fighting game that kept the action and fun of International Karate, but distanced itself from Karate Champ. This was done with three major changes. First, the scoring system was revised. Players now play to five points, with moves varying between one and two points. Second, many new moves were added, including head butts, backflips and split kicks. But the most noticable addition to the game is that of a third opponent. In IK+, it’s now one-on-one-on-one action.

Regardless of whether one or two human players are playing, there are always three fighters on the screen (a new blue-suited fighter has been added). The first fighter to get to five points wins the round and gets a point bonus to boot. The second best fighter also advances to the next round. For third place, it’s “sayonara”. As the levels advance, so do your computer opponents, continually increasing in skill and speed. By the time you reach black belt status, your enemies will be extremely accurate and quick.

System 3 managed to cram 18 different moves for players to use in the game, which is amazing considering the limitations of a joystick and one fire button. There are different attacks to use depending on the distance between you and your opponents. There are also several attacks to use to take out enemies sneaking up behind you, including backward kicks and reverse leg sweeps.

With literally hundreds of fighting games for the Commodore 64, IK+ managed to fight its way to the top of the list with innovative gameplay and a variety of moves. IK+ also features fluid character animation and another dazzling soundtrack from legendary C64 musician Rob Hubbard. If you’re looking for a fighting game with plenty of action, it’s hard to go wrong with IK+. It’s fun, easy to figure out and extremely addictive. One of the best fighting games for the Commodore 64.

House of the Dead 2 and 3 Return
Nintendo Wii (2007)

I knew it had been too long since I had stepped in an arcade when I happened across House of the Dead 4 at my local mall and my first question was, “wow, did I miss House of the Dead 1 through 3?”

The House of the Dead games are rail shooters — first person shooting games where players do not control their character’s paths. Characters travel through the game along a predetermined path, and gamers are only responsible for pointing and shooting. Don’t worry, that part alone will keep you plenty busy. The two games included here are both ports from previous console systems (House of the Dead 2 is a port of the Dreamcast version; House of the Dead 3 came from the Xbox), with both games modified to work with the Wii’s controls. The Wii’s controllers, with or without any additional gun accessories, work amazingly well. Aiming is smooth, not jittery at all, and responsive. I had no frustrations with the controls at all. For those who feel a difference between using a bare controller vs. one of the zappers out there, the game includes a quick calibration mode that works great (more games should include this).

Those unfamiliar with the House of the Dead storyline shouldn’t have any trouble jumping into House of the Dead 2 and 3 with both feet. Both games’ storylines are, by and large, moot. The goal here is to shoot zombies in the head and avoid shooting humans in the head. That’s pretty much it. Along with the games’ original arcade mode, there are other modes including Extreme Mode (where everything’s a little tougher) and a training mode that tests your reflexes.

If I had any bones to pick at all, it would be with the disc’s loading times. During the arcade/story mode things’s aren’t bad, but the training mode spends ten seconds reloading every time you fail (which turns out to be quite often, in my case). House of the Dead 3 has some in-game slowdown as well. There are two other basic complaints about the game floating around on the net, neither of which I agree with. One concerns the game’s graphics, which have not been significantly updated since the Dreamcast/Xbox versions. I quit buying Wii games for their graphical quality a long time ago. The other common complaint I’ve read is that the game is priced too high — again, I disagree. $30 for two games with no major bugs sounds pretty good to me, especially compared to some of the stinkers currently available for the Wii that are priced higher than that. Fans of rail shooters are certainly getting their money’s worth with this package.

Happy Feet
Nintendo Wii (2006)

After a while, all those computer animated kid-oriented films start to run together. While I’m sure my kids (ages two and five) could tell you all about last year’s hit film Happy Feet, all I can tell you is that it stars computer-animated penguins, at least one of which likes to dance. I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but honestly I already feel like I know more about the plot than I want to.

Happy Feet for the Nintendo Wii combines three basic game engines and links them together with cutesy animated cutscenes. The first level is a DDR-style game that involves waving the Wiimote around instead of stomping with one’s feet. The second level has players sliding on their little penguin stomachs while racing through ice tunnels and avoiding snow drifts and icicles. The game’s third engine is an underwater swimming adventure on rails. The DDR-esque level involves holding the Wiimote like a wand and flicking it in one of four directions (up/down/left/right). The other two levels involve holding the Wiimote sideways, tilting it from side to side to steer.

First, the good news. Happy Feet is great for young kids. My five-year-old son was able to beat all the levels the first time through, so the learning curve is minimal. Plus, you know, kids love singing and dancing penguins. So that’s a plus.

And now for the bad.

(Get comfortable.)

For starters, if you are over the age of ten you will be bored with this game in about ten minutes. The DDR idea is gimmicky with controls that don’t always register. The underwater swimming scenes offer few challenges, and the belly-sledding game is like Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam watered down for pre-schoolers. (In fact, after playing Happy Feet for fifteen minutes, my son begged me to put Tony Hawk back in.) The levels seem unrelated other than the fact that there’s a penguin in all of them, and after running through the three types a couple of times everything became pretty repetititve. I had hoped that at least the two-player modes would be more fun, but even those are pretty lame. In the underwater scenes, there’s no way to go faster than your opponent, and in the downhill sledding you both control the same penguin, with one person steering while the other jumps and does tricks. Zzz.

It’s pretty obvious that the controls for Happy Feet were developed with conventional gamepad controllers in mind and retrofitted to the Wii. Personally I didn’t find any added enjoyment or gain in control in tilting the controller vs. a conventional d-pad. Bottom line, Happy Feet feels like a $9.99 game with a $49.99 price tag. It barely passes for a “last-gen” game, and certainly doesn’t meet the expectations for the current generation.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter
2006 (Xbox)

The latest installment in Tom Clancy’s/Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon’s franchise is Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (GRAW), available for the Xbox 360, Xbox, and PC. The PC and Xbox versions are different enough from the 360 release that they can really be considered two different games. While I haven’t played the 360 verison, I have played all the previous Ghost Recon (GR) games available for both the PC and the Xbox, which is what I’ll be comparing the Xbox version of Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter against.

GRAW follows the same general style and presentation of the other Xbox Ghost Recon games (all of which I loved, I feel compelled to mention). Like the previous games, GRAW is divided into larger missions and smaller tasks and goals which are constantly being explained to you throughout the game. In-game audio and video clips constantly feed you current information about checkpoints, new mission goals, and so on. There’s never a question about what you’re supposed to be doing at any given time; the Ghosts have strict orders and specific targets, facts the game will remind you of if you get too far off course.

The biggest difference fans of the series will notice is that unlike previous Ghost Recon games, GRAW is presented in first-person. While it doesn’t make the game any less fun, it does make it seem less like a “Ghost Recon” game and more like a “generic first-person Army shooter”. In your first-person view, information is constantly being passed to you via heads-up displays in your visor. Your map, your datalink, and even what your backup Ghost parter is seeing is all pumped onto your screen in small windows. While the audio clips often contain critical information, most of the video clips are of such bad quality as to be useless. The small window that shows what your partner sees looks more like a Powerpoint slideshow than real video, and the clips of people talking to you (the helicopter pilot, for example) are 2-3 seconds long and then looped for the length of the audio. I’ve seen better lip-syncronization in dubbed ninja movies.

GRAW takes place in Mexico City, where throughout the streets you’ll find plenty of cars, planters and obligitory crates to take cover behind. Your overall mission is to rescue both the American and Mexican presidents from Mexican rebels who have already killed the Canadian Prime Minister. Unlike the previous games in which you had a squad of ghosts to control, you’re only given one fellow soldier to accompany you through missions this time. This addresses the problem some of the previous games had in which your fellow AI soldiers occasionally did too much of the work. Commands such as “advance”, “regroup” and “hold your fire” can still be issued quickly to your partner, useful for sending the poor sap directly into a patch of angry rebels or off to destroy convoys of enemy tanks by himself while you hang back in the rear sipping on margaritas. The “advance” feature can be used to send your fellow Ghost running for cover, although from what I could tell he did better on his own than with me bossing him around.

Those who detest online campers will be delighted that the prone position (lying down) has been removed from the game. Instead, in addition to crouching or standing, players can now sprint by pressing down the left analog stick and then pushing it forward while steering with the right. It doesn’t take as much manual dexterity as actually running, but it’s close. While running, a stamina bar appears, preventing gamers from running the entire time. Players can also “lean” around corners while holding down the left trigger and pressing left or right on the left analog stick. Pressing down on the right analog stick turns on your rifle’s scope. Running across an alley way, ducking behind a dumpter and peering around it using your scope requires pressing down on the left analog stick/pushing it forward and steering with the right stick (to run), pressing left trigger (to duck), pressing the right analog stick (to turn on the scope and finally holding down the left trigger while pressing left or right on the left analog stick to peek around the dumpster. There’s definitely a learning curve involved, although probably not any more than any other advanced first-person shooter.

GRAW pushes the Xbox to its limits, a fact evident by the game’s loading times and frame stutters. The game’s physics engine is kind of fun though, and you will be delighted at the way enemy soldiers crumple after being shot by your sniper rifle — that is, if you can overcome the newly added “drift” feature, which makes your scope wander around aimlessly as you try and plug bad guys. While the majority of the game maintains a decent framerate, it’s hard not to notice the stall, stutter and jump every time the helicopter takes off at the beginning of the first level. And trust me, you’ll be seeing that scene plenty while learning GRAW’s controls. Unlike previous GR games, in GRAW you can only save your game at specified save points, not at any given time. That means you’ll have to make it pretty far in the first mission before finding one. Walk past one manned alley and it’s back to square one, captain.

Like Summit Strike before it, additional styles of gameplay such as “capture the flag” and “last man standing” are available through Xbox Live. Up to twelve players can battle it out online. In person, up to four people can shoot it out, Goldeneye-style.

Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter is definitely different than the other games in the series. The game’s many changes almost make GRAW seem like it’s not part of the franchise. Gamers used to crawling around and waiting in the shadows will have to adapt their style of play if they want to survive in this run-and-gun chapter. Fans of the original storylines will enjoy taking Captain Mitchell out on yet another mission, but diehards may find the game has strayed a little too far from the chain’s tried-and-true roots to be familiar.

Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike
Xbox (2005)

Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike is one of those games that doesn’t really need reviewing. It’s essentially Ghost Recon 2, repackaged with a few new features. If you liked the original, you’ll like this one. However, since A, it’s the only new game I’ve picked up in the past two weeks, and B, everybody is rushing out the door to head to either CGE or vgXpo this weekend, I thought I would go ahead and write up a brief review. Oh, I almost forgot the most important part; C, it’s really good.

Using the same engine as Ghost Recon 2, this stand-alone expansion pack adds new maps and new missions to the existing GR franchise. Offline, there are eleven new missions which can be played by either one or two players. Online, GR2:SS contains two new styles of game play (Heli-Hunt and Armor Strike, bringing the total for 24), 24 maps, and several new weapon and graphical upgrades.

As with many other FPS shooters, you’ll need to take control of your squad if you plan to get very far in the mission. Hold them back and you may be the first to take a bullet from the enemy; send them off into battle too soon and you’ll risk blowing your cover. Fortunately your fellow soldiers have pretty good AI, and tend to react realistically in most battle situations. Unfortunately for you, so does the enemy.

While GR2:SS is being promoted as an expansion pack, there are enough new features and upgrades found within for it to stand on its own feet. Ghost Recon 2.5, perhaps. Fans of console FPS who like a little strategy mixed with their weaponry should pick up Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike. Not only is it a better game than GR2, but it also has an MSRP of $29.99. Win/win.

Godzilla Generations
Dreamcast (1998)

Some people claim the Dreamcast tanked due to the release of Sony’s PlayStation 2. Others say the Dreamcast failed because of widespread piracy of the system’s games. My own personal theory is that the Dreamcast failed because Godzilla Generations sucked so badly.

Ruining a Godzilla game is like ruining a cake — you started with some pretty tasty ingredients, so what happened? Guys love tearing things up (have you ever been to a monster truck rally?), so it doesn’t seem possible that anyone could ruin a game that revolves around tearing things up! And yet, once again, game developers have done the seemingly impossible, and somehow made mass destruction boring.

The goal of Godzilla Generations is to pick one of multiple versions of the big green lug (Godzilla, Mechagodzilla, First Generation Godzilla, USA Godzilla) and work your way through levels by destroying cities and avoiding death. While playing you will notice Godzilla has the ability to roar and heal himself, which essentially means you can play forever without dying (unless it’s from boredom). Gameplay revolves around stomping on various cities while avoiding being killed by tiny army people, but there are multiple quirks (including control and camera issues) that keep this from being as fun as it might sound. First off, Godzilla should be renamed to Godmolasses as it takes him forever to perform such complicated maneuvers as turning around.

Just like the Christmas I was old enough to realize Santa wasn’t coming, I played Godzilla Generations for a couple of hours hoping it was going to get better, but sadly realizing it wasn’t going to happen. While some of the technical and graphical issues can probably be attributed to the fact that this was a launch title for the Dreamcast, even the world’s most advanced processor wouldn’t have the power to turn this into a good game.

The only three bad things about Godzilla Generations are its looks, controls, and gameplay. Instead of buying this game, pick up a package of tiny plastic green army men, scatter them around your backyard and spend a few minutes stomping around on them while roaring. I promise, that’ll be more fun.