Grumpy Old Git Gaming

Beneath a Steel Sky, or BaSS, is a point-and-click adventure game developed by the British company Revolution Software and published by Virgin Interactive in 1994 for both MS-DOS and Amiga home computers. It was made freeware, and its code was open-sourced in 2003. It still maintains a loyal fan base today. Set in a dystopian cyberpunk future, the player must guide Robert Foster through a society he knows nothing about in an attempt to avenge the killing of the Aboriginal group who had taken him in as a boy. Gradually, the player reveals a deep and intricate plot being orchestrated by society's rich and powerful and must find a way to stop them. The game was originally titled Underworld and had a fairly different plot before Charles Cecil, the games development director, decided to involve comic-book artist Dave Gibbons.   I found this game on an abandonware website listed as an action adventure, and based purely on the screenshots, I decided to give it a go, and boy, oh boy, ...

***** THIS REVIEW IS FOR AN ADULT GAME *****   Behind The Dune is a porn/adult parody of the Dune series of books by Frank Herbert. The developer, David Lynch, has the player assume the role of Paul Atreides and go through the plot of the first book, but with an adult twist. Allowing the player to seduce and have his way with many of the female characters in the Dune world. This game lets the player choose how to behave and has a wide range of kinks and adult content available, with a series of endings, the outcomes of which are dependent upon the player's choices throughout the game.   Hrrmmm, HRNURRMMMMMMM!  This game had me feeling a certain way, and I'm not sure that I liked it at all. The core gameplay is a literal copy-paste of the 1992 game by Cryo Interactive, and so is the appearance of this game, all the way down to the characters and how they look. Literally, apart from the new art direction and some new dialogue choices, the gameplay and looks are exactly the ...

Beetle Adventure Racing is a racing game developed by Paradigm Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts in 1999. With gameplay similar to the Need For Speed series, the player takes a Volkswagen Beetle and competes in a series of races and championships. The gameplay involves racing on unlocked tracks, finding and destroying crates, and collecting coloured ladybirds while battling the CPU opponents. In addition to the original release, this game was released in Australia as HSV Adventure Racing, with the Volkswagen Beetle replaced by the Australian Holden Special Vehicle VT models. Being a fan of the Need For Speed series and Top Gear games, I was expecting something similar with this one but instead found it to be somewhat lacking. It was like someone had taken a Need For Speed game and stripped it down to the most basic components, then ported it to the N64. There just wasn't enough of this game for me, and I found the single-player to be a disappointment too. I felt that t...

Battlezone: Rise of the Black Dogs is a first-person shooter/real-time strategy game developed by Climax Group and published by Crave Entertainment. The player takes charge of a tank from a first-person perspective and is able to command everything on the map in an RTS style. Allowing the player to obtain victory over the enemy faction in their relentless search for 'bio-metal'. With a different campaign available depending on which side is chosen, either the U.S. or the Soviets, there is some replayability to this game. Two expansion packs were released for the PC version, and in 2016, a remastered version titled Battlezone 98 Redux was developed by Big Boat Interactive and published by Rebellion Developments. This game was a mixed bag for me; I liked what was attempted but also recognised that there was a lot of cut content to make it fit onto the N64's game cartridge. As such, the gameplay was something of a shell of itself when compared to the PC version. I can totally ...

BattleTanx 64 is a vehicular combat action game developed and released by the 3DO Company for the Nintendo 64 and Gameboy Colour. It was followed by a sequel in 1998, named BattleTanx: Global Assault. The game is centred around the character of Griffin Spade, a man whose fiancee has been kidnapped by a roaming tank gang after a virus has killed all but a tiny percentage of women. Turning the last remaining women into Queenlords, rulers of the post-apocalyptic world. Play is in the 3rd person and gives the player control over a tank with various weapons and clearly defined goals and missions. This was a game that I enjoyed for the most part and can't really complain too much about. I thought that the game was a little short, being that I completed it in about 7 hours, but it wasn't terrible. It was fairly fun and packed with action, with a 'man vs. the world' feel that hit well with me. I liked the themes and found the story to be fairly well written and depicted. Play w...

BattleTanx: Global Assault is the second game in the series and a direct sequel to BattleTanx 64. It was made available on Playstation One too. This time around, the story focuses on an evil Queenlord, as she spies on Griffin and his family in order to kill them and kidnap his son, Brandon. The player is then tasked with rescuing Brandon and stopping the evil Cassandra in her plot. The game ends on something of a cliffhanger with a sequel planned, but sadly, The 3DO Company went bankrupt not long after releasing BattleTanx: Global Assault, and so no sequel ever came. The gameplay is a little changed from the first game, but it sees the addition of new tanks and weapons for the player to wield. I liked this game more than I did the first title and found it to be an enjoyable experience to play through. I did find that the pacing was broken up a little too much, and I thought that some more story dialogue or maybe some different missions would have helped with that. It just felt like the...

Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker is a side-scrolling beat-up developed for the N64 by Kemco and published by Ubisoft. A Playstation One and Gameboy colour version were also developed and released around the same time. The game is based on the direct-to-video film of the same name and puts the player in the role of Terry McGinnis, the new Batman, taking over from the retired Bruce Wayne. He battles through waves of crooks and genetically engineered henchmen in an attempt to stop the recently resurrected Joker from completing his evil plans. Play is very much the standard for a beat 'em up, which consists of lots of button mashing and swearing and doesn't really offer anything new or fresh for the genre. Contrary to the critics and reviewers of the time, I actually had fun playing this game and thought that it was okay if you looked past the obvious flaws. Yes, the AI was about as smart as a strip of bark and can be dispatched with insulting ease. Yes, the camera angles were fi...

Banjo-Tooie is a platforming game developed by Rare and originally released for the Nintendo 64 console in 2000. It is the second game in the Banjo-Kazooie series and the sequel to Banjo-Kazooie. The game follows the returning protagonists Banjo and Kazooie as they attempt to stop the plans of the witch Gruntilda and two of her sisters, who intend to vaporise the inhabitants of the game's island setting. The game features worlds significantly larger than those of its predecessor, requiring the player to complete challenges such as solving puzzles, jumping over obstacles, collecting items, and defeating opponents. It also includes a multiplayer mode in which up to four players can compete in several minigames repurposed from the main campaign. For me, this game was a marked improvement over the first title and one that I very much enjoyed chipping away at over the course of a few weeks. The whole experience, for me, was much better than the first game and seemed more geared towards ...

Banjo-Kazooie is a third-person action adventure game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo in 1998. Following the exploits of an easy-going brown Honey Bear named Banjo and his sidekick, the Breegull Kazooie, the player is taken on an adventure to save Banjo's sister Tooty from the foul-tempered, grumpy witch Gruntilda. With classical platformer-style gameplay, the player must lead Banjo and Kazooie through a series of worlds with a rich and diverse cast of characters and enemies. Collecting various items and skills along the way, fixing the wrongs caused by Gruntilda before finally cornering her for the final showdown. In 1999, Banjo-Kazooie received two awards during the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, which were 'Console Action Game of the Year' and 'Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics'. It also received several nominations, including for 'Game of the Year' and 'Console Adventure Game of the Year'. IGN awarded Banjo-Kazooie t...

Bandits: Phoenix Rising is a vehicular combat and action adventure game developed by Grim Software and published by Singularity Software. The player takes on the roles of Fennec and Rewdalf as they try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where cars and the fuel to power them are held in the highest regard. The player must fight clans, militias, and roaming bands of criminals, constantly battling each other for control of this precious resource. Play is done from the 3rd-person perspective, with the player using a combination of keyboard and mouse controls to drive a combat-oriented vehicle through a series of missions. I liked the concept and ideas behind this game and found that the controls and core elements of play were pretty good. However, there was also a lot that frustrated me and somewhat soured my experience. I found that at times the player could get stuck or lodged into the ground or hills too easily and would take several minutes to free, unless you gave in and chose to ...

Babylon 5: I've Found Her is a completely fan-made game by a group of skilled and dedicated Babylon 5 TV series fans. Everything in this game was made by fans with no studio involvement and was meant to be a teaser or demo for a game that never came. Instead, it was released as an open-source mod for people to play, with a complete and ready-to-go campaign and supposedly 6-7 hours of gameplay. The development was halted part way through as the developer Sierra was planning to release their own game set in the Babylon 5 universe. Things once again picked up after Sierra abandoned their game, and the assets and engine were then adapted for this game. I wanted to love this game so much, and I really did. I have no idea about the Babylon 5 universe and have never seen a single episode of it, so I knew that I would have no idea about what was going on or why. I also knew that this was a fan-made game using the framework of a scrapped Sierra title and not an actual, true game as such. So...

Automobili Lamborghini is a 1997 racing game developed and released by Titus France for the N64 exclusively. Play consists of choosing one of a variety of cars and racing through several different championship configurations. Allowing the player to eventually unlock cars that resemble the Porsche 959, Ferrari F50, Ferrari Testarossa, Dodge Viper, Mclaren F1, and Bugatti EB110. In 1998, an improved version of this game was released in Japan only and was titled Super Speed Race 64. This is one of those games that I found to be rather disappointing overall. I had hopes that it was going to be something like a Need for Speed title, but instead it was an arcade racer with no real depth. I had this game completed and done with in under six hours, and that was with messing around and trying the time trials and such. There was just no meat to this game, and I found that the only real redeeming feature was the multiplayer. If you could get some friends over and bumble around a track together, i...

Asteroids Hyper 64 is a clone of the original stand-up arcade cabinet game Asteroids from the 1980's, with improved graphics, updated gameplay, and numerous new multiplayer modes. The game has over 50 levels with steadily rising difficulty and features an end-of-level boss battle before progression to the next stage can be obtained. The game also allows players to collect a variety of new and useful power-ups to help them as they battle their way through the single-player mode. I was conflicted by this game, as I am a firm believer that almost every game that is released for an arcade cabinet should just stay on arcade cabinets, but that every game should also be given a chance. This game is one of those that should never have been ported to a home console, in my opinion. While it is not the worst game that I have ever played, and it has come up with good points, it is ultimately a clone. Nothing more, nothing less, and I don't feel it could ever be more than a clone of 'th...

Army Men 3D is a 3D shooter developed and published by the 3DO Company and released exclusively for the PlayStation One. Play is much like the other Army Men games, but this time around it is fully 3D. Allowing the player to take a Green Army soldier known as 'Sarge' and battle against the evil Tan Army through a series of missions with your trusty rifle. I wasn't all that impressed with this game, and I found it to be dull and repetitive. I thought that this game lacked substance and that it was very much bare bones. It was like the 3DO Company was playing it safe, and as this is their first game to reach home consoles, I can understand why. That doesn't mean that I can let the various issues I found go though. A common problem for the Army Men games is the controls and responses. Once again, the game responds to player inputs sluggishly, and at times you can be forgiven for pushing the directional button a little bit too hard in an attempt to get your character to tur...

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes II is the tenth game in the Army Men series and a direct sequel to Sarge's Heroes, which was released in 1999. Developed and released by the 3DO Company, the game was also ported to and made available for the Playstation One, Playstation Two, and Gameboy Color. Unlike the first game, this one featured a more lighthearted storyline. I found this game to be a big disappointment when compared to the first, with perhaps an exception made for the slightly less serious plot. The gameplay was rough, and I found it to be lacking in comparison to the original. Controls were again sluggish, and the same issue with having to turn Sarge's whole body to aim remained unchanged. There was no flexibility to Sarge's body at all, and it really annoyed me as the levels were much more cluttered than in the first game, which made overrunning into an enemy a major problem. The computer was able to hit you from further away than you could hit them, and explosives had ...

Army Men: Sarge's Heroes is a third-person shooter developed and published by the 3DO Company and is the fourth entry in the Army Men series of games. They are based on the green plastic figures of the same name, made popular by the Toy Story films. The port for the Dreamcast was developed by Saffire and published by Midway Home Entertainment, while the Windows version was published by GT Interactive. Play is done in the third-person perspective, where the player guides the Green Army's Sarge on a series of missions to stop the evil Tan Army's General Plastro from bringing new superweapons through portals from the human world back to the toy world. I wasn't itching to play this game when I started it, and although I thought it was okay, I was far from impressed by it. There were a series of issues that bugged me, and more than once I had to switch the game off and walk away. One of the most annoying things that I found was the poorly implemented controls and their respo...