Last Week's Games: Crazy Taxi, Reigns, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Guitar Hero, New Super Mario Bros

Pretty crazy...

I started this week by downloading Crazy Taxi off Xbox Live’s Games with Gold. This is a game that has been talked about fondly for many years but as far as I can remember, I never actually played. I didn’t own the Dreamcast, and while a version of it did come out for the PlayStation 2, within six months of buying one I was bought Grand Theft Auto 3 for Christmas, in which the same essential experience can be created by stealing a taxi and starting the taxi mission. I initially thought it was going to be another pick-up-and-play game, which was fine by me, but I sat playing it for two hours so I definitely enjoyed it! I’m not very good at it though; the advanced driving techniques performed by the somewhat clunky gear-shift mechanic elude me at this point, and I haven’t yet managed more than a “C” rank. I’ll probably keep trying, though!

I also had a quick go with Reigns, a whimsical decision-making game about being the king, and trying to remain so as long as possible before you die in some way. I didn’t get too far in the game before being pulled apart by various people in the church. I’m not quite clued up on how all the mechanics of the game work yet, as in what decision is likely to affect what outcome – but it looks like this isn’t a game you “beat” in the usual sense. More likely, you’ll be unlocking all the possible characters, all the deaths, all the events etc. I’ll probably have to look at a guide or something to get to the last few, but it looks like a game that would work great on mobile; a filler for a spare ten minutes.

Of course I returned to Mordheim: City of the Damned, and continued my campaign as the Red Death Possessed warband. At the moment I seem to be doing well against most of the other factions except the Sisters of Sigmar, whose morale and resilience are at odds with my somewhat low level of damage output and not quite having the right spells to deal with it. The first campaign mission is ready to go but having attempted a playthrough as Chaos before I know that the opponent for this is the Sisters, so I’m making sure my warband s is ready to go before I do this – even though this is usually how I get bogged down in the game and find progress very difficult.

Not sure which game this shot comes from,
could be any of them...

And then for some reason I had an urge to dig up my old Guitar Hero controller and try the first Guitar Hero game. I’ve never been especially very good at these games because I find that when I watch the scroll bar going up for a while, my vision starts to do the same so five or six songs is usually quite enough. Somehow in spite of this I managed to get through the entire game on Easy mode and earn a 5-star rating on all the available songs.  I had a go on medium difficulty, but I found myself thinking that if I’m going to work that hard to get through a game, I might think about doing some more practice on the real thing so I can play some more songs!

Someone want to tell me how to
open up that bottom path?

Finally, I continued playing New Super Mario Bros. I beat the first world, and got up to the first save point in the second before going to bed. One thing I’m noticing about the later Super Mario games is how well it accommodates varying levels of play; the levels aren’t that much of a challenge to get through and you could potentially get through the whole game by running to the right and jumping at the right time. But some of the content is gated off by a certain number of collectables you have to pick up, in this case the large coins. It gives an incentive to take your time, explore the levels and really get the most out of the game. I found it was a similar situation when I covered Super Mario 3D World last year; it’s a sign of good game design!

Last Week's Games: New Super Mario Bros, Mordheim: City of the Damned, 911 Operator

Since I’ve been trying to play a new game every week this year, I tend to play the new game for the week on Mondays. I found that while I was playing through Far Cry 2, I was so heavily invested in that game it became difficult to justify playing a new one for its own sake. So these days I give myself some time to play a new game on one of my days off, so that my obligation is out of the way and I’ve got time to do whatever I want later in the week, whether it’s playing the new game if it’s engaged me enough, or continue with whatever game I was trying to beat before. I haven’t been so invested in a long-form game since Far Cry 2, I enjoyed Theme Hospital of course but most of that had been done roughly a year before.

I'm enjoying the shell power up.

So my new game for this week was New Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo DS, as this is a great pick-up-and-play game. It’s always interesting to experience the new gameplay mechanics that run across the different Super Mario games – new for me anyway, as up until Super Mario 3D World, I hadn’t play a Super Mario game for any significant amount of time since Super Mario World for the SNES. I had a lot of fun with the Blue Shell, even when I accidentally used it and ran in to something that killed me. The giant mushroom is fun as well, though I suspect that as you can destroy Warp Pipes with them, you’re closing off secret areas that could contain the giant coins you’re supposed to be picking up. I’ve not got very far in the game yet, but the point of my DS is that I can play it for a little while when it’s convenient for me to play a handheld system, so I’m not expecting to make rapid progress through this one. It’s there when I need it!

I did mine in Red, funnily enough...

I also had a go at one of my favourite games: Mordheim: City of the Damned. I downloaded it for my laptop a few years ago and, after a bit of faffing around with the graphics card, found the strategy experience hugely enjoyable. I’ve definitely put more hours in to this than any other PC game I own! Unfortunately the game is a little buggy, and some game-breaking bugs coupled with an ironman saving system has meant that I haven’t beaten it yet. I might do this time though. I’ve started a Possessed warband called The Red Death; we’ll see how it pans out.

Assigning units, taking calls... the life of a 911 Operator!

As you’ll see from the Pickups and Trades blog I’m putting out on the last Wednesday of every month I’ve gone a little mad with downloading games off Steam, and with the school holidays on at the moment, I thought I’d take the little more time that afforded me to play one or two of them. I started with 911 Operator. This was a game I think I heard about over the releases section of the Co-Optional Podcast, and I’m enjoying games that are doing things a little bit differently. From what I heard, I was expecting an L.A. Noire style negotiating style of gameplay as you desperately tried to sort out what was wrong before it was too late. That’s in there, certainly, but a lot of it is an “assign your units” point and click strategy game. You assign police, fire fighters and paramedics to various vehicles with different strengths and weaknesses, and purchase equipment for them. You then go into deployment mode, where you assign those units to various emergencies that crop up over the cities in the game.

I’m in Miami at the moment, and brilliantly there’s a team of veteran cops in a sports car apparently referencing Miami Vice, an 80s cop show I’ve never actually seen. They can usually get to an emergency quicker than any squad car, but you need to assign another car to the emergency if they need to take any criminals in. It’s a great game so far and I’m enjoying playing it, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.  
 

Backlog Beatdown: Theming Hospitals with Theme Hospital

In 1998 I bought Theme Hospital and played it on my Dad’s laptop. Nearly 20 years later in 2018, I completed the game on my own laptop. And what a delight it was to play it again!

Vomit waves are always fun to deal with...

Theme Hospital has you managing a succession of different hospitals, researching cures, helping patients and run your hospital at a profit. It was an interesting age of video gaming; 3D graphics were becoming the standard for consoles and there were interesting franchises on PC as well. The game’s developer, Bullfrog, had done very well with Theme Park a few years before, and were pushing the envelope with what could be done with thematic management games. And then along comes this little gem of a game…

How it works is that each level has a certain criteria that must be attainted in order to progress to the next. You have to have your reputation above a certain level, have cured a number and percentage of patients, have made a designated amount of money and have your hospital above a certain value. Curing patients happen as a matter of course, and you plan your hospital carefully so that not too many of them die. The value of your hospital increases as you buy more buildings and build more rooms. Reputation is affected by a number of different factors; the better you perform, the higher your reputation will be. Acquiring money takes time, but once you reach a certain point in the level it will come rolling in. When you fulfil the criteria, you’ll be offered the next level on the next quarter of a year, but if you underperform, you’ll lose the game.

As for curing patients, this is where the design of the hospital comes in to play. They first have to visit the GP and potentially a number of diagnosis rooms before they can be cured. Once the diagnosis is established, they are then sent for treatment, if it is available. If not, you have the option to tell them to leave, or wait in the hospital for you to build a treatment room. However, you only have a limited amount of time to cure the patient before their illness kills them. The process is straightforward, but researching all the available diagnosis and cure equipment can take time. Also, in a busy hospital, they may have to wait a hopelessly long time in order to see the GP if you don’t keep on top of managing the queues. Not to mention the amount of walking between diagnosis and treatment rooms, and the occasional need to use the toilet!

Funnily enough it never occurred to me to
design my toilets like that...

Managing the staff of your hospital is crucial as well. Generally, the higher level of skill each staff member has, the quicker they will do their job, so you want this as high as possible. Certain doctors are needed for certain specialisations; for example only researchers can research, only psychiatrists can handle psychiatric cases and only surgeons can perform surgery. Doctors can be trained to improve their skills, and in later levels this is crucial to the efficient running of the hospital. Also they need to take a break every now and then.

The game starts out basically, and introduces mechanics and gimmicks as it progresses. This does a good job of teaching you what does what, but ultimately it is on you to come up with the best strategies for creating the most efficient hospital possible. The emergencies (cure a certain number of patients in a few minutes or they will die,) epidemics (cure everyone infected with a contagious disease within a few minutes without any of them going outside or face a fine and take a reputation hit) and earthquakes (maintain your machinery properly or they’ll blow up in the event of a quake) add random layers of challenge to the proceedings and make sure there’s always something to do after you’ve built all the rooms.

I really enjoyed playing through Theme Hospital again. It’s brilliant concept, and while the graphics are pretty basic, they’ve lost none of their charm. It’s great fun to play and beat, with the occasional wobble with execution and glitches. I’d highly recommend giving this one a go.

Last Week's Games: Atari Anthology, New Super Mario Bros U, Theme Hospital

I started this week by playing the Atari Anthology on the PlayStation 2. This is a compilation of 85 games that were a mixture of the Atari 2600 console and Arcade games, and with my borderline OCD method of decision-making, I tried some of them in alphabetical order. I had a go on a 2600 years ago which my friend Richard inherited off his Dad, and even with my age in single digits, I knew that games had come on a long way since then. Most people who collect and play these games now do so because they have some nostalgic investment in it; I don’t have this but it’s an interesting concept nevertheless. The games showcased by this compilation “Started a Revolution,” and from what I understand about the 2600, it needed this shortlist! Many of the games released for it weren’t very good, and contributed to the over-saturation of the market that cause it to crash in the 1980s. Video games were in their infancy at that point, and a lot of what makes them fun for me – an end goal, an engaging plot, a challenging process and a satisfying resolution – just wasn’t there.

I like how the art for the early video
 games looked significantly better than
 the actual game...

Due to the limitations of the hardware, and that the entire concept of video games was still in development, the better games concentrated on their playability. I had a lot of fun with 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, a game played over a 4x4x4 cube. There is definite strategy involved, but if you mirror the computer’s moves, you’ll reach a draw. It took a while to beat but I managed it in the end.

Air and Sea Battle was reminiscent of early shooters, in which you play a gun turret shooting planes and helicopters out of the sky. Set up correctly, you have two minutes to score more points than the gun on the opposite side. As a single-player experience it’s over quite quickly; I’d imagine it would be better with two players, but most things are!

When I needed a few moments to wind down, I had a go with New Super Mario Bros U on the WiiU. I find that, with such wide gaps between playing this game, I forget about some of the newer techniques and power-ups and have to remember what they do before I can use them in any meaningful way. But it’s a nice fun game that I don’t have to think too hard about, which is exactly what I need at eleven o’clock at night!

Last Friday I beat Theme Hospital. I’ll put out a Backlog Beatdown review next Friday, but developing the points I made last week: The Epidemics and the Earthquakes are difficult to deal with, need to be included. In the later levels, there comes a point where everything needed to beat the level is basically done, and all you’re doing is waiting for the money to roll in so you can progress to the next one. The Epidemics, which gamble some money and reputation on being able to cure a certain number of patients in a certain time and none of them going outside, and Earthquakes, which damage your machines, appear at random and add some challenge to the game when everything is done. It’s a harsh way to extend the game, but they needed to exist.

Oh dear, that doesn't look too good...

Also the last level was deceptively simple to beat. I’d researched all the cures, built all the rooms and trained all my doctors to be as efficient as possible. While the criteria for beating the level is quite high, I was waiting for a curveball I didn’t think was going to come. It arrived right at the end: Most of the levels end on the next quarter of a year. With the last one, it only ends at the end of the year – and you have to maintain the standards until then. It took me longer than it should have to clear it, as just before the year ended, an earthquake that destroyed a few of my machines, a couple of doctors working on them – and my reputation. It took a long time to pull it back, but I did, and finished the game I originally bought in 1998!

Last Week's Games: Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, Theme Hospital, 3D Pawn

Yeah, she's terrifying.

My new game for this week was Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the Nintendo DS. I wondered how many other franchises were brought to the system with a suffix that abbreviates to DS, as one of my other games is Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. Still, at least Dragon Sword makes sense in the context of Ninja Gaiden, as that is the weapon that the player character, Ryu Hayabusa, is using. It’s an odd game in many ways, not least because you hold the DS vertically and control the character almost entirely with the stylus. Hold the stylus down in a location, Hayabusa will go there. Tap a location or an enemy, and he will throw a shuriken. Swipe across an enemy, and he will slash them with his sword. There are a number of different combinations of swipes that will do different techniques that are more difficult to do but more powerful if you manage it. The only control mapped to any of the buttons is block; you can press any button for this. 

I played it for a while, and even though the combat can get repetitive, doing it with the stylus is enough of a novelty that it remains fun. The trickier move combos are satisfying to pull off; some semblance of physical effort is required so you feel like you’ve earned it when the move is executed. The boss battles are good as well: It’s not enough to mash the controls; you need to learn their attack patterns and wait for your opportunities. I’m enjoying the game so far and I’m looking forward to playing more of it!

Someone needs to buy more drinks machines...

I continued playing Theme Hospital after getting stuck on the tenth level. I had to re-start it; the vomit virus around the hospital was getting out of hand and the rapid succession of epidemics was haemorrhaging all my money. I beat the level by making sure I had enough Handymen (who keep the hospital clean and stop viruses from happening) to keep the area clean, and spamming GP’s offices and receptions around the hospital. These are the busiest areas because the patients visit the GP regularly, so I arranged it so that the patients were spread out and that there were no more than six people in a queue at any given time. That worked for the tenth level; I now find myself on the eleventh, where I tried to create an efficiently-running hospital in the same manner, only to spend a lot more money than I had and got fired due to an increasing amount of debt, as a rather on-the-nose metaphor for recent changes in UK health policy.

Incidentally, that Epidemics mechanic is a pain in the bum. The idea is that some of your patients have an illness that is contagious and could spread. When you get the memo, you have two options: Either declare the epidemic, take a fine and a reputation hit, or try to cover it up by curing all the relevant patients in a given amount of time. There is a cash bonus if you manage this, but if you fail, your hospital is either fined or all your current patients are evacuated. The trouble is your time is instantly over if any of the patients go outside – even if it’s to access the other buildings in the hospital. I’ll have to plan it so that the patients can get through the entire diagnostic process and be cured before they have the opportunity to go outside – this will take some doing!

An impressive concept, if nothing else.

Finally, Kirsty and I had a go at 3D Pawn, the game with the name that sounds ever-so-slightly suspect when you say it out loud. It’s a magnetic cube with a 3x3 grid on each side, with nine pawns of a light and dark colour on opposite sides. The pawns move like pawns in chess, except you can move sideways. The object of the game is to get one pawn onto your opponent’s side of the cube without being immediately captured. Not an in-depth experience, but a nice ‘travel’ game to be played in bed or in the back of a car. Which also sounds suspect when combined with 3D pawn…