AVGNs Misaligned Retro Games

Recently The Angry Video Game Nerd released his latest video about DOOM and its various versions and before I get into the meat of this post, can we just take a moment to appriciate just how long James Rolfe has been going with this thing.  DOOM is his 205th episode and while you could argue there's been somewhat of a dip in quality compared to his older stuff, the show is still pretty entertaining to watch.  Hell, I remember being in highschool watching this shit on gametrailers.com when he was a member of that weird duo called Screwattack and his name was the Angry Nintendo Nerd, remember that shit?  Regardless of how you feel about his show, being able to run a web series for THIS long is quite the achievement.

I've noticed over the years from talking to people both in person and online that AVGN has at least had some hand in shaping general opinions on retro games.  There are a pretty significant number of people who will watch an episode of AVGN, see the footage that Rolfe has taken and his comments on the game and come away with a rather strong opinion of the game sucking despite never having played it themselves.  Then, when the topic of that game comes up, they will state very strongly and very confidently about its suckage because they've been totally convinced by the episode.  Having played most of the games that AVGN has covered and having beaten most of them, I'd say that most of the time if a game has appeared on the show, you're probably safe in assuming that it sucks shit.  No one is going to argue that Super Pitfall is some kind of hidden NES gem that has got a bad rap, just looking at it really is enough to just tell that it sucks

But there are a couple games that he has covered that have this awful reputation online that are actually pretty good and I want to talk about those a little bit

Simon's Quest was AVGNS very first episode.  It's an interesting episode too since it's basically got none of the production that we would come to see shortly after it being put out, it's just James talking over bits of game play footage.  There IS a lot of criticise in this game as well, to be fair such as kind of bland level design in the mansions, cryptic puzzles that I'm not sure how you're supposed to figure out and a stupid day/night transition but the game, overall, isn't THAT bad.  Traversing the overworld is generally pretty fun, upgrading your gear is cool and this game basically laid a bit of groundwork down for what modern Castlevania would end up turning into.  If you like the later entries in the series such as Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow then it can be cool to come back to this one and see the beginning of the idea.  Sure, progress is a little hard to just intuit by yourself but play with a guide and a lot of the frustration sort of just goes away.  I've met a lot of people who have played and really love Castlevania 1 and 3 but have completely skipped over 2 because they "have heard it sucks" and that's a damn shame.

 

This is one that actually really grinds my gears because Silver Surfer for the NES is actually really fucking good but because of that, admittedly quite funny, episode of AVGN I feel like this game gets a lot of flak in retro gaming spaces for no reason.  The graphics are decent-ish, and soundtrack is amazing and the gameplay is tight but holy fucking shit is it HARD.  But that's the problem, bring up a conversation about Silver Surfer and people will go on about how much it sucks when really those "problems" are things that are true for a lot of other shmups.  The big example is how you can't touch any of the walls in a stage or you just die, which yes is sort of annoying but there are plenty of other games where that's true.  R-Type and Gradius do that shit too but you don't see anyone knocking those games for that.  The real issue with Silver Surfer is that your hitbox is MASSIVE which makes avoiding things pretty hard but its something you just adapt to.  With a little bit of memorization and enough skill to keep your power ups, the difficulty of Silver Surfer is no worse than literally any other shmup on the system.  

This was the game that inspired this post, fucking Countdown Vampires.  When I played this as part of my 31 game horror challenge I was also kind of guilty of just thinking it was shit because it was an AVGN feature.  I wanted one shitty game on the list that we could all laugh at but really it was just fine.  Nothing spectacular, not the kind of thing that will be remembered as a survival horror great or anything but functional.  Also we still got a laugh from the weird script and voice acting and overall the experience was pretty enjoyable.  That said though, anyone who even had a passing knowledge of this game all said the same thing of "oh god it's THAT game, that game SUCKS" despite most of them having never played it in their lives.  There's even a decent amount of effort on display with the amount of guns, monster variety and pre-renders.  Hell, there's even one bit near the end of the game where there are 3 different pre-renders for an area that has nothing in it aside from a single box of ammo.  Someone modelled, rendered and got that shit to work in the game just so we could run up and down it and barely pay attention to it while we get an item.  I see you Mr or Mrs 3D artist, good for you.

Yes it's easy, yes the dialogue is terrible but in a sort of endering way that I quite like and yes the game barely has any countdowns OR vampires but you know what, good game.

Countdown Vampires is fucking good

--- 

There are some other examples outside of these 3 of games that he rages at but are really just fine.  Nightmare on Elm Street on NES comes to mind in this regard but you get the picture.  Usually he's pretty accurate about a game being shitty but every so often he does miss.

2022 Horror Challenge Roundup

 

On October 1st 2022 I started a challenge that involved playing though 31 horror games within a month (outlined in this post http://identitygaming.blogspot.com/2022/09/31-game-horror-challenge-2022.html) and on October 30th 2022 I completed that challenge!  It was a stressful month, for sure, but it was an immensely fun challenge and I'm totally planning to do it all again next October.  For now I wanted to just go over a few of the games from the challenge that I thought stood out, so think of this post as a sort of "Halloween spooky game award post" 

Best Game

I did a horror game challenge about 2 years ago and failed it miserably because I'm an idiot that put some IMMENSELY long (and shitty, Days Gone) games and Yuppie Psycho was one of the ones I didn't get to back then, so better late than never I guess.  It's a game that's truly best experienced by knowing as little as possible about it but, let's be honest, is there anything more frightening that office work?  Pepper in a unique setting and some occult-type beats and you have a rather unique experience that is as charming as it is scary. 

That's all you're getting for this one, go play it

Worst Game

Dread X Collection is a collection of short horror games made by various developers that I played off stream and was deeply disappointed by.  Dread X Collection 2 I played on stream and it was probably one of the most miserable experiences I've had with a horror title in a very long time.  The ideas behind the games are bad, the games themselves are bad and there's this sort of air of smugness about the whole thing that makes it pretty unbearable to play.  It's a level of incompetancy that is rarely found anywhere within game development and I feel that most of the people involved should probably fuck off to some other medium.  Most of the games in this collection are barely playing, boring, try-hard messes that despite having an extremely short length feel like they drag on and on just because of how vile they are.

There are 2 exceptions to this though.  One game was called Squirrel Stapler which was really daft but sort of fun to play.  The other was called Sucker for Love which is a sort of joke dating-sim where you have to try and woo an Eldritch God which was pretty funny and also came with some decently creepy concepts and imagery.  However play Sucker for Love with the voices OFF because the voice acting was extremely cringe worthy.  

I own 3 or 4 more Dread X games since I got a bunch of them as a set and after playing these two I have 0 motivation to continue the Action52 of horror games.  

Biggest Surprise

After seeing the AVGN review and being told about it by various people I was expecting something truly awful, something akin to the level of quality of Dread X Collection 2.  However Countdown Vampires is a game that's actually pretty fun to play, at least on stream with a group of people to banter with and revel in its insanity.  It's just a shoddy clone of Resident Evil that has basically no vampires and like, 4 countdowns in it but there's something sort of endering about the whole thing.  The 3D FMV sequences are non-sensical but weirdly well produced and a decent amount of effort went into the pre-rendered backgrounds even if the actual render quality is sort of shoddy.  Also the game is really, REALLY funny between absolute batshit character design and voice acting that makes Resident Evil 1 sound like Shakespear; the whole thing, while not good, was highly entertaining and I'd happily play it again 

Scariest Game

I know that saying Silent Hill 2 is scary is like saying that the sky is blue, just obvious bullshit thus making this pick seem like a complete cop-out but the one "mistake" I made this year was that most of the games I picked almost completely failed on their horror fronts.  F.E.A.R gets a close second for, while not being scary in the slightest, at least TRYING to get an ambience down and Alien Isolation gets props for making me make silly noises when I messed up but I wasn't actually scared by any of the games this year except for maybe this one. Even then its more fear of a concept of my wife getting sick and dying before my eyes than it is of the actual game but it scared me pretty badly in my teenage years so it gets the scariest game spot for being creepy on multiple levels at least. 

Least Scary Game

I didn't know anything about Geist when I put it on the list.  I mean, it's called "Ghost" but in German so I was expecting something at least a little spooky but what I got was a sort of ghost-themed action game/puzzle game?  Not that I'm going to bash it too hard, it was fun to play and the ghost-based puzzles were equal parts interesting and funny but there was a bit too much just shooting dudes with guns in first person for me to really consider it a proper horror game.  Still, I feel like a lot of people haven't tried this one so if you get a chance, give it a go. 

---

So that's it for this year!  There will be other horror games peppered into the stream here and there throughout the year, of course, but we wont be going full spooky again until next October.  Keep me informed of any cool horror games you find via Discord or twitch chat and maybe they'll get put on the list!