L is for....

Land of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse

Master System

Not Castle, not World but Land of Illusion starring the one and only Mickey Mouse in yet another platform game from the early 90’s.

To be fair a rather large chunk of the games from the 8-bit generation were platform games but Mickey Mouse did seem to get round a bit. In this game Mickey falls asleep reading a book of fairytales and upon waking up finds himself to be in a strange village. From there it’s the standard case of working your way through the levels to find the crystal at the end and then progress on the next level.

It’s by all means not a bad game but of what I played it didn’t seem to be a particularly good game either. You kill enemies by bouncing on their heads with your bottom or by throwing an item at them (which seem to be in short supply) and solve the occasional puzzle which does add a nice little element to the game. If you fancy a game starring Mickey Mouse then I would recommend picking up one of the other ones first.

Within the 15 minutes: Trying to complete the second level.

Will I play it again? Possibly.

Lemmings 2: The Tribes

Super Nintendo

The sequel to the popular Lemmings game in which I spent most of the time nuking the poor little fellows.

The game play for Lemmings 2 is pretty much exactly the same as the first game, you have a load of lemmings come out of the door, you get them across the puzzles and make sure that they enter the other door. Sounds simple enough but anyone who has played the first game will know that it is in fact not as simple as it sounds. I’ll be honest and admit that I was never really that good at the first game but still enjoyed trying to get the little lemmings to safety though as mentioned previously I probably spent more time nuking them.

One of the main differences from the first game is the addition of a lot more skills in this one, the original only had eight skills, this one had more than that on the first level alone. The skills included the likes of glue pourer, sand pourer, jet pack and roper. Even will all the additional skills I couldn’t work out the second level, don’t let that put you off though as it does seem to be a good game.

Within the 15 minutes: Stuck on the second level.

Will I play it again? I might give it another shot.

Loaded

Sega Saturn

Take Smash TV; mix in some crazy characters created and designed with contributions from comic book writers and artists and you have loaded.

Loaded is your good old fashioned top-down shoot ‘em up with rather a lot of shooting as you face wave after wave of enemies who come pouring out of the rooms like there is no tomorrow, I was only playing on normal so heavens knows what the most difficult level is like. I lost a canny few lives but then that could also partly be because I wanted to make the most of the 15 minutes. You start of by selecting one of six characters (I went with Mamma who is actually a man in a babies outfit) due to having high armour and a Plasma gun. The gun starts off alright but as you kill more and more enemies you can collect upgrades with make for pretty cool weapons.

The first level was absolutely huge with having to find key cards to progress to the next section and finally onto the next level, despite it being a simple shoot ‘em up it looks like you may be able to get a good few hours out of the game and I would recommend doing just that.

Within the 15 minutes: Still on level one.

Will I play it again? Yep.

Lost Kingdoms II

GameCube

Lost Kingdoms II is a card-based action RPG and the sequel to Lost Kingdoms which was also released for the Cube.

I went with the sequel as I’ve previously played the first one just longer then fifteen minutes and wanted to see what the second game was like. Well, from the short time that I’ve played them both they seem pretty similar, including the cards that are available. The cards contain monsters which pop out and attack enemies in various ways. The two types of cards which I got to use were ‘weapon’ and ‘independent’. Weapon when pressed releases a one strike monster which pops out, hits the enemy and goes back into the card; the card can be used three times before being discarded. The independent card releases a fully fledged monster that attacks the enemies on its own allowing for you to take on another enemy.

The only real sort of negative for me was the whole standing around waiting for the enemies to be defeated. When I unleashed an independent it took a couple of minutes to kill an enemy and after a while I just wanted to run forward to strike down the enemy myself, it’s not enough to put me off playing it again though.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed the third mission.

Will I play it again? Yep, once I’ve finished the first one.

Lost Magic

Nintendo DS

Lost Magic is a game that utilises the DS touch screen by making the gamer draw magic spells to defeat enemies with.

The game is a real-time strategy game which on the one hand is good as some people prefer them to turn-based RPG’s (I don’t have a preference of either) but on the other hand for this game is actually rather a pain. To fight enemies you have to hold down the L button which brings up a Rune template on the bottom screen of the DS, you then have to draw the symbol of whichever magic spell you want to attack with, sounds ok so far. Well, rather annoyingly the enemies generally take more than one hit to kill meaning that as you are drawing the spell the enemy is happily standing away repeatedly hitting you. Add to this the fact that you have Mana points for the spells which runs out after about three spells (though does top itself up if you stand around) and the fact that you have a time limit on each round of enemies it can add up to a rather frustrating experience.

The game does have some nice ideas with having to draw the spells and the ability to capture enemies (which can also be done in Lost Kingdoms II) and turn them into an army which means that you can set them on one set of bad guys and take on another yourself but for some people the game may be rather annoying.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed the training and protected the village.

Will I play it again? Yeah, was actually starting to quite getting into it.