Random Retro - Monster Hunter (Playstation 2)

I've had the Playstation 2 version of Monster Hunter for years, but I was told by a friend not long after I picked it up that it was pointless playing it offline, as the whole point of it was online play. Quests wouldn't pay as much offline, and tackling the bigger monsters would be far too tricky alone , so it would be a lost cause and I should probably avoid it..

And so Monster Hunter was stuck on the shelf after a very quick play to make sure my copy loaded at least, and was forgotten about for several years.....

2018 happens, and everybody is going crazy for Monster Hunter World, and as I've yet to get a machine capable of playing this new entry in the franchise, I decided to hunt out my copy of the original and give it another look to see how it plays offline. Just a quick ten minutes or so to see how it's aged, I think to myself....

Two hours later, I find myself struggling to switch off a game that has quickly become a favourite, and one that I realise has obviously influenced quite a few other games I love (especially Dragon's Dogma!) .......

Starring as an up and coming Monster Hunter with big ambitions, you start the game in a small village and obtain quests from the Village Elder, who at first tasks you with collecting meat and food for the village and learning the basics of surviving out in the field.

Soon though, some more aggressive types of monster start to appear than the the herbivores you've been chopping up for steaks, and you'll be asked to dispose of these terrors to keep the villagers safe and uneaten!

Once you've killed these monsters, you can strip them for meat, hides and bones, which you can then use as food to top up your health or as crafting materials to build better tools and weapons to make you an even better hunter! You can find other items by searching under trees, in bushes,etc. or mining rocks, catching bugs with a net or fishing. You can then combine these finds with others to create potions or other items that will also help you be better equipped to take on the larger monsters that you'll eventually be asked to hunt down!

It all makes for a very enjoyable journey through the many different areas, collecting the materials to upgrade and arm yourself so you can access even more areas and take in the sights. I said I put the game on to see how it's aged, and the answer to that is beautifully! I was pleasantly surprised to see the realistic forest settings and nice little graphical touches, such as the shadows of clouds flitting over the mountains creating a very realistic atmosphere, and streams of light shining through the gaps in the trees....

The variety of different beasts is great too, from the very dinosaur-like Apceros and Velociprey, to the very deer-like Kelbi, and the weird-but-cute Melynx, a race of cat people that surprised me by mugging me when I stumbled into a cave and proceeded to steal all my stuff! There's a cool little guy who waddles around near a big tree and takes my monster bones as trade for mushrooms too, and he reminds me of the odd creatures that populated the countless fantasy films I watched as a kid! 

I've only been playing for a few hours, but already I've stumbled upon some bigger creatures too, like the Rathalos, a giant fire-breathing Wyvern who isn't very happy about me trying to steal it's eggs....and this is making me slightly concerned that maybe these creatures might be a bit too tricky to take out playing solo, and that my friend might have been right to say that the game lacks a lot by no longer being online enabled!

But, at the same time, I'm very glad that I've came back and revisited Monster Hunter, and even if I do get absolutely devastated by the Rathalos, or even a small group of Velociprey, at least I can have fun roaming around these gorgeous landscapes, roasting my meat whilst some comical music plays to tell me when it's ready to eat (or, if I stop it cooking early, ready to be used as bait!), crafting my armour and then chilling out with a bit of fishing....

It's actually a huge shame that it's taken this long for the West to wake up to Monster Hunter, and I wish I had discovered it back when I was still able to connect my PS2 online, as it would obviously have been even much more fun then....but even so, Monster Hunter on PS2 is a game still worthy of a visit, especially if like me you can't join in the fun with Monster Hunter World yet! So stick on your leather vest, arm yourself with a bone-knife and go hunt down a copy! Meanwhile I'll still be here trying to shift these bloody Wyvern eggs without breaking them.......and enjoying every controller-throwing, rage inducing minute of it! 

Random Retro - The Black Cauldron (PC)

The Black Cauldron (PC DOS):

Way back in 1985, I became somewhat obsessed with a Disney film that looked like it was going to be very different from any other...one that was a bit dark.....one that embraced the fantasy style that I was also obsessed with at the time!

Trailers on videos and clips on Disney shows elevated my excitement for the film, but I never ever got to the cinema to see it, eventually catching it on pirate video at someone else's house a year or two later! And I loved every minute of it! 

I probably would have loved it even more if it hadn't been for Mr. Jeffrey Katzenberg though...newly appointed as Disney's studio chairman, he decided to make drastic cuts after some children in test screenings found the film to be far too scary! After ignoring producer Joe Hale's objections, Katzenberg took the film to an editing suite and started cutting away at it himself...

Luckily Hale grassed up Katz to Disney CEO Michael Eisner, who called him and convinced him to stop. Katzenberg still requested that some cuts remained though, mainly ones involving the 'Cauldron Born' Army of the Dead that the Horned King brings to life to aid him near the end of the film. A full 12 minutes of footage was cut, even ruining Elmer Bernstein's score for the film, with a very noticeable jump in the soundtrack where a scene of Cauldron Born slashing a neck and torso was removed...

Some of these cut scenes can be found on Youtube, and we always can pray for a very unlikely uncut version to be released for the 35th Anniversary, but it's only in fairly recent years that the film has been getting the attention it deserves, with a very poor showing at the box office on release and a somewhat sparse release on official video years later. It would seem that the Celtic mythology was a bit too dark for most parents looking for Disney films to keep the kids entertained...

Which makes the fact that a video game based on the film existed way back in 1986 slightly odd! I only discovered its existence this year whilst looking for old games to cover for Gruesome Games, but I knew upon discovering it that I'd have to cover it on here.....

Designed by Al Lowe (best known for Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry) and released by Sierra OnLine, it's an adventure game in the style of the earlier King's Quest. To try and make the game more accessible to younger players, Sierra removed the text parser and instead used action keys to perform various functions in the game. Even with these keys, the game can still be a bit fiddly to play these days, as even with a joystick, you'll still need to choose which items to use from a menu and press buttons on the keyboard.

Anyway, the game starts in just the same way as the film, with protagonist Taran keeping busy on Dallben the Enchanter's farm as Assistant Pig-Keeper. After wandering around exploring for a bit, you'll discover Dallben in his house and he asks you to go feed Hen Wen the pig! After avoiding a rather annoying goat, you feed Hen Wen who then wanders into the house and reveals that she possesses the power to have visions, and thus must be scurried away to safety before The Horned King steals her and uses her power to locate The Black Cauldron!

What follows is a fairly enjoyable jaunt through the land of Prydain, with Taran having to avoid obstacles such as swamps and raging rivers, alligators, dropping rocks, henchmen, swooping beasts and suchlike....and solve various puzzles of the sort you'd expect to find in Sierra games!

On my first game, Hen Wen was kidnapped by one of the flying dragon-type things almost immediately, but on my second it took considerably longer for this to happen...and in my third it didn't happen at all! This is a good example of the many different paths you can take through the game, and the various different routes will allow you to see multiple endings!

Knowing the movie helps out for some of the puzzles though...for instance, when the lovable (or annoying, depending on how you feel) Gurgi appears in the game, knowing he likes apples for munchings and crunchings will get him on your side a lot quicker! 

There are some bugs that can see you suddenly able to walk on water or getting stuck on various bits of scenery, but I didn't discover any real game-breakers so far. One bit that did have me tearing my hair out was when you use a rope on a cliff face and try to climb it....every single time I would fall off and die! I finally realised that I was being daft, and it was as simple as using the diagonal up-right key to climb up instead of just pushing right, but I can imagine joystick users hating this section!

Shortly after that bit, you reach the castle, and there's some enjoyable section where you have to evade the aforementioned alligators and then scale a wall avoiding rocks to get into the castle, but there is another way into the castle...which I won't tell you, but it is another good example of the range of choices available!

I'm really enjoying playing through this game, and whether it's because of the subject matter or the action-buttons-instead-of-text-parser feature, I've spent a lot longer with this than any other early Sierra title! Even if you've never seen the film and aren't a fan, it's still a perfectly good adventure game and well worth a go or two! Or three.......

Right...I'll leave it there! Hopefully I've convinced you to seek this out and give it a go! But I think for now I'm off to see how much it costs for a pet pig......laters, Stuffers!! ;-)

This GIF credit belongs to Tumblr user starrattlerofprydain!

Random Retro - Duck Out (ZX Spectrum)

Duck Out (ZX Spectrum) :  

I thought it was about time I started writing about some non-Gruesome-Game-type-games on the blog again, as I've been meaning to cover such things ever since I started and have only ever really covered Tusker on the Speccy! And whilst we're sticking with the Speccy for the first Random Retro, I plan to cover games on a lot of different systems in the future....

But what is this oddity that I'm bringing to the table for starters? Well, it's Cartoon Duck a l'speccy...a dish that initially looks quite appetizing but ended up leaving a bad taste in my mouth!

The game starts with our hero (who bears a striking resemblance to a certain daft duck from Warner Bros.) trying to escape the clutches of a bloodthirsty chef who's been trying to cook him! Taking control of Dafty (which is what we'll call the duck from now on) you have to run from left to right through the level, battering enemies with a handy frying pan and dodging flying kitchen utensils as you try to reach the exit of the restaurant!

You're not just trying to stop Dafty from becoming a feathery-flamegrill though! You have another good reason to hurry along, as you're late for an appointment to meet your girlfriend in the park! So you have to battle your way through the streets, avoiding or battling tramps, rats, bats, street cats and ferocious dogs to reach the Park before the impatient lady-duck decides to leave!

It's still not over once you get to the Park either, as to get to the pond you'll have to deal with some thugs, lizards and more rats, bats, cats and dogs before finally making it to your girl and, hopefully, some smootchie-smootch-style action!

As you can tell from the screenshots, programmers Fernando and Ignacio at Dro Soft were really trying to get the cartoony-vibe right with this game, and they pretty much succeed as the graphics do indeed make you think back to lazy Saturday mornings spent watching cartoon animals inflicting torture on each other with whatever implements they could lay there hands/paws/feathers on....

There's just a few problems though. First, dodging and hitting is literally all you'll be doing as you progress through the three levels....and it gets very repetitive, very quickly! Especially when you consider the second problem...the difficulty!! Like most Spanish games I've played on the Spectrum, its just too damn tricky! Touching anything will drain your energy, and the enemies come at you thick and fast which makes the third problem the one I found most frustrating...

In order to batter the enemies you have to first hold the fire button and then press the direction you want to swing the frying pan in. However, pressing down and fire will aim the pan low in whichever direction you're facing, whilst pressing fire and up will aim directly in front of you. For some reason I found this very tricky to nail, and often when trying to hit enemies that I had to aim high for, I'd hit up before pressing fire and jump right in to them instead of smacking them!

Maybe I'm just rubbish at the game and need to spend more time with it, but the difficulty of it all makes me not really want to bother...which is a shame as it does seem like a good game is hidden in there somewhere!
Luckily, someone did indeed finish it with the help of an emulator's rollback feature and there's a play-through on Youtube at RZX Archive, which I used to get the screenshots from the later levels and which you watch below...

If you're too lazy to sit through that though, (or even lazier and don't want to skip to the end of the video) I present here some screenshots of the duck of Dafty's dreams that awaits at the end of his quest....

At least she starts off as a duck, but then bizarrely changes into a human, which suggests a melding of species the likes of which hasn't been seen since Howard The Duck...

Ultimately then, a disappointment...but still worth giving a go out of curiosity! Hopefully the next game I try will turn out better...join me again soon to find out! Later, stuffers!