W is for....

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

Saturn

Warcraft II is a fantasy based real-time strategy game where you can choose to control either Orcs or Humans in the battle to build your army and destroy the other side.

I’m going to be completely honest here and say that the time I spent playing this game I found it to be extremely boring and it did not absorb me into the game at all. When I started the game I went for the human side and was promptly given four characters to control. At the beginning of the game only one character was of any use which was the workman, the other three were all guards/soldiers who pretty much just stood around having nothing to do. First of all I set my man to work collecting gold from the mines which took absolutely ages to complete and really did start to grate. After that I set him on chopping down some trees so that I could build barracks and by the end of the fifteen minutes he had managed to collect the gold and chop down two trees.

Now don’t get me wrong I really don’t mind how fast or slow the game play is but when it’s literally just watching a guy collecting gold and chopping down trees with you not being able to do anything else it really doesn’t endear me to the game. Command and Conquer showed me that I can enjoy RTS games; unfortunately this one was not for me.

Within the 15 minutes: Nothing much.

Will I play it again? Afraid not.

Wario World

GameCube

Like Luigi, Wario starred in his own game for the GameCube but like Luigi’s Mansion will it be considered a future classic.

Well, unfortunately I don’t think that it will be seen as a classic game in the near future but overall it is a fun and quite in depth game. The basic premise is that Wario is enjoying his treasure when a rogue evil jewel transforms the treasure into monsters and Wario must defeat them and return everything to normal. To progress through each level you have to find a minimum of three red diamonds out of a possible eight, I say out of a possible eight as it all depends on how you fancy playing the game. If you fancy just having a quick run through you can quickly find three diamonds, run to the end of the level and progress through to the boss. If however you want to complete the game fully that’s when the game opens up.

Each level has two stages and a boss and each stage has a lot of stuff to find and collect. There are the afore mentioned red diamonds, eight parts of a Wario statue that gives you an extra half of heart after each stage, five annoying things called Spiritelings who give hints and tips to Wario and finally eight pieces of treasure which when all found open up mini-games from the GBA game WarioWare Inc. The basic game play is a 3D platform game but there are some fun and at some times frustrating puzzles and whilst it doesn’t really offer anything new it certainly is worth a play.

Within the 15 minutes: Was still on the first level.

Will I play it again? Yes, in fact it was the first game where I carried on playing afterwards.

Waverace: Blue Storm

GameCube

Blue Storm is the sequel to the smash hit N64 game Wave Race 64, which in turn was the sequel to the original Game Boy game first released in 1992. Is it as good if not better than the N64 version?

In a nutshell no. Whilst still a fairly decent game for me it just doesn’t better the N64 version at all and in some places I feel that it is actually worse. Now throughout these posts I’ve tried to avoid talking about the graphics in games as for me the graphics are generally low down in my list of reasons to play the game but do you remember the first time you played Wave Race N64 and saw how well done the sea and the waves were? Well for me this game really did not have that same effect and if anything I felt that the graphics had not moved on that much since the N64 version which is a real shame.

Another thing was the controls, talk about being sensitive. You really do have to the move the control stick very delicately as just the tiniest push too far will send you far beyond where you want to be and when the space between the checkpoints is so narrow and tight it really does make it a rather frustrating experience. It’s a shame about Blue Storm as I really do like the N64 version but this game really didn’t do anything to push the franchise on.

Within the 15 minutes: Was nearing the end of the Championship.

Will I play it again? At some point in the future.

Winter Olympics

Megadrive

Winter Olympics is based on the 1994 games in Lillehammer and whilst I know nothing about those particular games I wager a bet that they weren’t as bad as this game.

Like Warcraft II I’m going to be brutally honest and say that I did not enjoy this game one bit. The controls were not very responsive at all, the game play was terrible and the sports were just boring and not fun at all. The games consist of ten different events which include the likes of Bobsled, Ski Jumping, Biathlon and Downhill. Biathlon was the only event that was half decent as the controls were very responsive the event included a shooting range section. Apart from that the rest were just boring and annoying.

Another annoying part of the game is that it takes a lot longer to go through all of the scores/times of the event then it does to actually play the event. I would say that over half of the fifteen minutes was spent just pressing the button to hurry past the screens to get to the next event. All in all it’s not a game that I will be playing again.

Within the 15 minutes: Was working through the full Olympics.

Will I play it again? Nope.

Worldwide Soccer: Sega International Victory Goal

Saturn

Worldwide Soccer takes the graphics, view and game play of Sensible Soccer and somehow manages to make quite a boring game.

The main problem with this game (and correct me if I’m wrong) is the lack of a run button which really does slow the game down. I know that not all early Football games had a run button but Worldwide Soccer is so slow that it really would benefit from one just to add that extra bit of pace to get past Defenders. Apart from that there isn’t particularly anything wrong with the game but for reasons that I cannot put my finger on it just didn’t grab me and by the end of the match I was already thinking of the next game that I was going to play.

As per the course, especially back in the day the game didn’t have a licence so all player names are fictional along with kits being slightly altered but it does have an editing mode to allow you to correct the names. Like I said earlier the game really isn’t that bad the lack of a run button along with the slowness does make the game a bit dull unfortunately.

Within the 15 minutes: Had won a match.

Will I play it again? Not looking likely.