2015. ápr. 5.

It may seem a bit irregular to write about a game pack for consoles on an overly PC-centered site, but there are ports and adaptations, so they are not too far from each other. I started as a PC-gamer,an I still avow myself one, but I never was stuffy enough to hate something just because… Well, you know your reasons. (Haters gonna hate anyway — Garcius) Even in my ancient PC-days certain console games piqued my interest, although I could only dream about them. Then came an age of ports (Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy 7-8), as well as the age of emulators. I would say there is no console emulator on PC I did not try. I grew up on classic PC games, but I was always seeking the extraordinary, and I was not interested only in PC games but Video Games in general, so I evidently got into the world of consoles too. To sum it up, I know almost everything from the ancients like C64, Amiga and Atari, through NES and N64 to PS2, Xbox360, PSP, Gameboy, DS, etc. Well, consoles was always ruled mostly by the Japanese game market with two main streams. There are the brain damaged stuffs made only for Japanese people, and it is not a shame that they rarely appear elsewhere than East. And there are the big shots made for a western audience, for example the rightly appreciated Metal Gear (Solid) series. When I tried Metal Gear Solid on PC (I played it through in 3 sessions), I decided I will never write console games off. Look, MGS1 was a console game, and it was ported to PC only because of its great success. This article gives an overview of a game pack that can force whole planetary systems to their knees. The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection contains three full game giants with more than 100 hours of gameplay in each of them. They are excessively meaty, and till now, they were not available for such console big boys as Xbox360 and PS3. But how this HD-thing made the grade? There were really screwed up setups like the Silent Hill...

I met a guy, someone’s someone, a young one. We talked some, mostly about games, and it turned out, I quote it: “I only played one RPG, Diablo II.” I told him that’s not an RPG, as I know, it was only diversified with a character development system. For this he said, who the f*ck am I to know better? I answered no one, no one, steady on, let D2 be an RPG. That was all. But in real, who am I to tell an opinion? The boy was around sixteen, and I’m playing pen and paper and computer RPGs for seventeen years now. There are approx. 20-22 different role-playing games laying on my shelves with 5-6 strategy games. Some of them are written by my own hand because I just borrowed the originals to translate them for me and my friends. But it is surely more interesting for a Gamedroid-reader that CRPGs were not waiting for long. I was a third grader in high school when I got my first desktop computer, a 286 brought by dad for a piece of homemade salami. It’s display was a small mono Unost television tinkered to be acceptable for the 4-color CGA. Particularly the PC was able to force 16 shades of gray out of this configuration. Well, this stuff saw a lot of interesting thing like STUNTS and POP 1-2, besides such curiosities as Ultima IV, Death Knights of Krynn and at least two parts of the Eye of the Beholder series. So, maybe there are some basic experience behind my opinion. Well, this is enough from the whining framed introduction. Let nostalgia come. Richard Garriott counts as the creator of CRPG with a cute little software titled Akalabeth, which was like ten white lines on black background. Like a dungeon crawling with stickmen. Then nine chapters of the Ultima series was developed from this – one of the most popular Ultimas, the fourth one can be found at the Doggies (www.homeoftheunderdogs.net) in a renewed version. I don’t guarantee it works on Win7, but if it does, you can get to know the feeling of Pen&Paper role-playing games from it. Take, for example, that tiny...

Don’t misunderstand it: “Minority report” is never about bad games. Rather it’s about enjoyable games full of flaws which, by well intentions, can be looked over during playing, but on the whole they bring the global impression about the game down. They are “ok, but…” and “I liked it, but…” types of flaws. And there is another important thing: I don’t choose games for writing minority reports because they are favorites of one or other editor of GameDroid. Of course, my favorites can be subjects of articles like this. What’s more, I would gladly read that if someone would point at the lacks and misses I didn’t see. Effect of the Masses Here, on GameDroid I already lamented about the situation of CRPGs today, and I emphasized the genre-destroying works of BioWare when they qualify their excellent action-adventure games as RPGs, in which genre these otherwise outstanding games can be only weak flicks. I was also screaming in the past when they called Mass Effect 1 a CRPG, because the running-in-tubes-shooting gameplay and the unimpressionable story contradict the labeling too much. Then Mass Effect 2 came to the shops as one of the main representatives of the genre – although, as some refinement it is often called action-RPG or shooter-RPG. For me, it remains an action-adventure game, and with this I consider the labeling topic closed. Besides being a gamer and liking adventure games I was interested in ME2 also because not only the faceless masses, but some of my friends too speak about it in superlatives. So marketing worked well: The masses drew the attention of my friends, and their opinion drew mine too. Chief Miner Let’s have a go at this: Mining is the lamest among the many legs of Mass Effect 2. Not just it eats up half or even quarter fifth of your playtime (it depends on you being exhaustive or not), but there are some major inconsequences in it. It can be seen with half an eye that you are the only miner in the galaxy. Half of the planets have rich deposits which can be depleted completely – in the same time, on a few planets there are...

Around twenty years ago the determining game of my childhood was born. In 1989 it was released for SEGA consoles at first, and by today it became a real legend. After just one year the hack’n’slash action game, Golden Axe was ported to PC (of course, it was available in Hungary much later). A tiny comment: It was the only game I got to know first in the form of a gaming-room machine. The family was on holidays at Lake Balaton… or in Tokaj? It doesn’t matter: the machine was there everywhere for not the delight of my parents, because I always asked for coins. In that time Golden Axe wasn’t far from the imagination of children, because the barbarian king, Conan, and the Rahan comics were in fashion and have similar setting. The game’s popularity was not surprising, because who didn’t want to be big and strong like a barbarian who hacks the enemy with a huge hatchet or sword?! It was a typical side-scroller action flick and completely lacked of the standard platform elements of that time. It was focused only on the spectacular action. The story was set in a world with common middle-age and Conan trademarks, and you had to kill the main boss of the villains, namely Death Adder. I heard and said the name so many times that it was almost burnt into my mind. I can’t even imagine the beginning of the nineties without this evil death knight. Golden Axe offered three playable characters with different abilities. The dwarf had weak spells but extraordinary damage dealing ability, mincing everyone with his double edged hatchet. The barbarian represented the golden mean with his average spells and sword. The red clothed amazon got numerous fans by her very strong spells and weak weapon. I don’t have to mention what character was chosen by my elder sister and brother – yes, only the dwarf remained for me. Of course, to reach Death Adder you had to decimate his servants first. Several locations waited for the heroes, and every level ended in an epic fight against some boss or a mass of enemies. The game had fantastic combat system – after...

2014. nov. 11.

By title a regular Gamedroid-reader can believe that this article will tell about the little pictures with attractive girls on them on the left side of this page. However, I have to tell you that it’s not. In the same time the title is not misleading, because I wanna tell you about games and girls in general. Although, the public of GD and similar sites can be described mainly with masculine attributes, but there are lots of evidence on games can catch girls too. Two ladies wrote articles about a CRPG and an MMORPG to one of our partner sites, the Rejtett Uradalom (Hidden Manor). Personally I got to know three female friends of mine in an MMO. It turned out about another one of my female friends that she is fond of The Path. Furthermore, putting tiny personal experiences aside, don’t forget Bella Online with its unbelievable list of walkthroughs, to tell only one example – it’s unbelievable considering BO is a site for women. It’s unpleasant in many ways but somehow game developers basically rule women out of possible target audience, and if not, they approach the topic a bit idiotically. Unfortunately, it is especially worth attention when a girl game is not full of bugs. No, it’s not about the leaping and dressing of Holly Hobbie and Strawberry Shortcake on java flash but the more serious stuff. One of the popular series, Star Stable offers nicely constructed horse games for young girls. You have to take care of your horse and you can ride races with it. Besides, you can do lesser tasks to help around the stable and for the people in the village nearby. All of these runs in GTA-style and with decent graphics – and with a pile of bugs which sooner or later will teach little girls how to swear. The similarly popular Pet Vet series was fabricated apparently by typical man brains. It contains so heavy elements of building and economical strategy that only a few hours of play was enough for me to ruin the whole African pet hospital. Not to mention that it has a serious limitation of choosing the language of the game:...