Metal Gear Barbie

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

You’ll be happy — or saddened, depending on whether you have the same twisted idea of entertainment that I do — to learn that tonight’s game will be the last Barbie game for awhile, until such time that I happen to procure another Barbie game that A) is not yet in MobyGames, or B) is already in the database, but that I genuinely want to play. What?

Yeah, you read that right — unless there’s a Barbie game that I actually care to try my hand at. Tonight’s game — Secret Agent Barbie — already has a very complete record with a good description, diverse set of screenshots, and complete credits. But I admit that I want to see what this is about. After all, I’m a moderate fan of sneaking games like Metal Gear Solid. And after a week of metaphorically eating my vegetables by playing Barbie titles for MobyGames, I hope this tastes like dessert.

It's Sky Diving Secret Agent Barbie! New from Mattel; seriously, though, the game implies that Barbie deploys to all of her secret missions via parachute, in broad daylight, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower

As the name implies, Barbie does a stint at an espionage agency. The agency goes unnamed. And they don’t really fight international threats. Mostly, they seem to investigate theft incidents that occur in the world of high fashion. Really, the organization seems more like a private investigator’s office with an extravagant clothing budget.

Clothing, you should know, plays a significant role in anything Barbie. This game is no different. Barbie has to change clothes every time she switches into a different game mode. There are 3 such modes — action (where Barbie can run and jump, onto crates, for example), adventure (where Barbie can walk casually and talk to people), and stealth (where Barbie can crouch as she walks and can also do a roll).

Clothing and guards– guards also play a significant role in the game. The game features extensive VR training for all 3 modes in which much of the focus is how to deal with guards. In stealth mode, the player is taught to perform a tumble-roll directly in the guard’s field of vision. Sure enough, he doesn’t notice you. In the adventure/talky mode, the player is instructed to use the makeup compact. After the guard gruffly warns that you are not allowed to pass, take out the compact and blow the contents in the guard’s face. Then casually wander past him. I guarantee that Barbie has never been more reprehensible than when she executes this maneuver.

Secret Agent Barbie -- Giving a guard the compact treatment

But I wanted to give this game the old college try. After the cursory, hand-holding training, the agency receives word that a famous fashion designer has had her designs stolen from the major New York fashion show, apparently held in Central Park. So Barbie ‘chutes in to investigate. The game immediately goes to action/jumping mode. In Central Park. Why?

Yep, crates in a park

Crates, that’s why. Stacked meters high in central park. Amidst fields whose “keep off grass” signs must be backed with deadly force. Old Man Murray would be proud (see Crate Review System).

So I wandered around the high fashion tent in Central Park and immediately found an invitation to a fashion show in Paris. This meant that Barbie had to go make a trip to that fashion mecca. Which is about the time that the banality thwarted any further interest. Obviously, all the missions are going to be extremely cut & dried– go to this location, avoid guard, find item; go to that location, use gadget, distract guard, find code; keep repeating. I mean, this is is so unlike Metal Gear Solid where Solid Snake is instructed to go to some location, avoid the guards, gather some item; then go to another location, use gadget… wait… ummm… well, at least Solid Snake doesn’t change his outfit all the time… no, wait, in parts 3 and 4, he is constantly changing camouflage as a key aspect of the game.

Look, at least the Metal Gear Solid series has big, cool robots, a feature notably missing from this game… probably. I didn’t really play far enough. Frankly, if this game featured a final fashion contest against a giant fashion robot, I might have to qualify it as being even better than a Metal Gear Solid game.

See Also:

At MobyGames:

Secret Agent Barbie
Every Barbie game that MobyGames knows about
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, my personal favorite stealth action game

Terk & Tantor Power Lunch

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Multimedia Mike

I’m not familiar with Disney’s 1999 animated feature film Tarzan. But that turns out not to be strictly necessary in order to follow Terk & Tantor Power Lunch, another in Disney’s Hot Shots series of casual games. Terk is a gorilla and Tantor is an elephant; they are your hosts for this game, only present to do their best to explain the gameplay and then crack jokes at the start of each level. I say “do their best” because the gameplay is just a tad baffling.

What we have here is a block smashing game of a type that I have never seen before. It works like this:

A particular board has, at the very least, some number of animals along with food items that that particular animal eats
The player begins with 8 chameleons
A chameleon takes the field and rolls into a ball, initially white
The chameleon bounces up and down between the boundaries
The player presses left or right to alter the longitudinal path along which the chameleon is currently traveling
When the chameleon touches an animal, he turns the color of the food that the animal prefers (monkey turns the chameleon yellow)
When the chameleon turns a particular color (like yellow), he can then touch and collect blocks containing the same colored food (like banana)

Got that? It didn’t make much sense to me at first. But I kept at it, mostly because there is nothing really to stop you throughout the first 5 or so levels. Like any casual game, I eventually got the hang of it and even started to wonder how far I could possibly get. Hey, it takes some strategy after awhile. Turns out that 23 levels (out of 50 total) was my limit when Kerchak (a gorilla antagonist from the film) puts an end to my remaining chameleons:

The boards also have cheetah and sloth powerups (or powerdowns, depending on what you need at the time) that speed up or slow down the chameleon, respectively. The there is the butterfly block which, when used properly, can eliminate a lot of food on the board at once.

So that’s the game portion. Tech support time. Installing this game was a comedy of errors, which is especially strange since the Lion King Hot Shots games seemed to work quite well, and they were released before this game. First, it presented me with this dialog upon installation, demanding to know the region in which I purchased the game:

Terk & Tantor Power Lunch -- region select

Note that the default selection is blank. Thus, the game feels it only appropriate to respond with a blank dialog message:

Terk & Tantor Power Lunch -- non-informational information dialog

After I got past that, I encountered this minor incongruency between operating systems:

Terk & Tantor Power Lunch -- Windows 95 dialog

See Also:

Cub Chase and Swampberry Sling, 2 more games in the Hot Shots series

At MobyGames:

G-Nome Horse Reckoning

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

I sometimes need to remind myself that, when I have some time to play a game, I don’t necessarily have to play a game that is not yet in MobyGames. I have an impressive backlog of games that are already in the database but just require screenshots. So in the interest of screenshot recon, I played 3 completely unrelated titles whose records just needed a few screenshots for posterity.

The first is G-Nome. It made me realize that the only thing that could possibly frighten me more than a real-time strategy game, complexity-wise, is a mech simulation. Perhaps Steel Battalion was onto something when they opted to package a gargantuan custom controller with their game. My only guide to the controls was the configuration screen, which went on for pages. I got just enough of an idea, launched into a training mission, and then backed out to study up on more controls. Unfortunately, I am ill-equipped to play G-Nome as it appears that the game requires most of the keys of an extended keyboard, including the keypad. I have an abbreviated, laptop-style keyboard for my desktop (hey, my cat needs the extra space on my desk for sleeping).

So I did not collect too many screenshots for G-Nome. I was able to figure out how to make my mech walk, turn, and shoot. I found the base, or something, shown below since my radar seemed to think it was a target. All the shooting in the world didn’t elicit a reaction.

It’s mildly disheartening to realize that I’m woefully out of my element when not playing a very simple game. So let’s move on to another game in the popular (because there is more than 1 title) Let’s Ride series of equestrian simulators (not to be confused with the Time To Ride series), Let’s Ride: Friends Forever. In the last episode I covered, I couldn’t find anything more to do than tend to my horse (as a girl) and race around the same 3 darn barrels. At least in Friends Forever, the series has expanded to include a male player character. Regrettably, there is even less to do in this version. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to mount the horse:

A game like this features braindead simple controls on which it tutors you every step of the way. When it came time to go outside with my horse, it was not at all obvious how to mount the horse. So I can only conclude that doing so is impossible in this game. Indeed, the entire game appears to revolve around caring for your horse and prepping it, and yourself, for the equestrian beauty pageant. The things I put up with for this gaming project.

After all that, I thought maybe I deserved an enjoyable, action-oriented gaming experience with another recent acquisition called Dead Reckoning. You would think I’d learn by now that all the good games are already in MobyGames along with lots of illustrative screenshots. I pegged this as a Descent clone and I was right, though this game is grievously unfit to carry on the legacy of that series.

The object of each level appears to be to play a 3-on-3 death match against a squad of blue fighter craft. You are the leader of your red team and can give orders to your wingmen. I won a few rounds through no fault of my own.

The graphics are busy yet uninspired and the play control is awkward. Maybe I’m being too hard on it and should do better to consider the period. However, the period excuse won’t work for the awful music. Have you ever opened a creative program, like a music editor or painting program, and starting toying around? Would you ever submit that first round of experimentation as a finished, commercial product? I ask because the music reminds me of someone’s first session with a computer music program, toying with every effect and stereo position without regard to sanity.

I caught this item in the stat screen for the Beetle fighter craft:

I guess I assumed that the people who made The Last Starfighter would have some kind of trademark or other intellectual property protection on the term “Death Blossom”.

See also:

Let’s Ride: Corral Club, another entry in the apparently popular series
There was actually an NES game that claimed to be The Last Starfighter

At MobyGames:

Layers Of Insults

Posted on October 29, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

It was not a good night for this gaming experiment. I tried out 2 recent acquisitions, the first of which was yet another CD-ROM based on the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale (here’s the last game I played based on the same tale). The disc had a series of large AVI files which indicated to me that it may just be an animated storybook. However, one of the non-AVI files explicitly had the word “game” in it. Turns out that the affair is an animated storybook but with a little “Puzzle” minigame. What kind of game? Only the one most hated by me– the sliding tile puzzle:

To be fair, it’s not actually a strict sliding puzzle game. Perhaps that’s what it was originally intended to be, but in this variation, the player can freely move tiles anywhere on the board. So that kind of takes away the challenge and makes the whole thing rather pointless.

I’m not dignifying this title with a MobyGames entry. There just isn’t enough meat there. So next up is Crazy Burger, a dreaded eGames title. Can I expect spyware? Fortunately, the game comes from after their great (government-induced) reformation. However, Spybot Search & Destroy caught a system registry access during the game’s installation.

Still, the game irks me straight out of the gate. I have seen this type of thing with eGames before, though I think it was called a game browser. Now it’s a Game Butler:

After installing the game, I am left a little confused about whether I can actually play the game, whether it actually needs to download itself from a website, whether it’s going to try to charge me for the privilege. But no, I eventually discern from the busy panel that I can click on “Crazy Burger” from the list box control on the left.

I was half-expecting some kind of 3D Burgertime-type game written in Visual Basic. By the time I got this far in the process, I was annoyed enough that I wanted to forgo the game’s entry into the database just to spite the game. The game is not a Burgertime clone, however, which is too bad– I liked Burgertime.

Instead, the game is a highly repetitive casual action game with a single, highly repetitive song. I probably could have dug around to shut it off, but what can I say? I was too busy trying to make a go of the game. The thrust is thus: You are the lone employee of increasingly complex and busy fast food establishments. You must serve a variety of impatient customers by making food with miraculously fast kitchen equipment. Even with the remarkable technology at your disposal, the red-faced fellow below is getting awfully mad:

There are obstacles, too, notably banana peels. Don’t step on one or you will be out of commission for precious seconds. It may sound like a simple trap to avoid. Unfortunately, the game likes to plop them where you can’t possibly see them. There’s also an ever-present sleeping dog in the kitchen. I’m almost certain that’s a health code violation, but whatever. This game was obviously made by a European outfit, as evidenced by the Euro-style prices on the wall (‘1,-‘ and ‘0,80’). Health codes are a bit different over there, if my travel memories serve me.

I thought to research the aforementioned European outfit, German developer Zone 2 Media. They have another food-oriented title called Dönermafia. I think it is based on Döner kebap, one of my favorite foods while I visit Germany (and it’s not even a traditional German item).

See Also:

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast — one of several games based on the Disney retelling
Beauty or the Beast — an odd take on the classic tale

At MobyGames:

Crazy Burger
Beauty and the Beast game group — real games that are based on the classic fairy tale
Burgertime series game group and Burgertime variants game group

The Intersection Of Automatons and Breakfast Pastries

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

In last night’s post, I alluded to breakfast cereal promotions. I decided to tackle that this evening. First up was a disc procured at a garage sale many years ago called 13 Days Of Halloween: Rhythm & Boos. It pertains to Count Chokula cereal. Imagine my disappointment to learn that it is not a game, but an audio CD. I had a similar experience once when investigating a Scooby-Doo disc only to learn it was a video DVD rather than a game. On the plus side, the Rhythm & Boos CD does have a nice 17-minute track of Halloween-type sounds.

No matter, because I still have two representative specimens of a trilogy of promotional discs for the movie Robots from 2005. These games were distributed in specially marked boxes of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts. I never saw the movie but I claim that this robot is considerably more terrifying than any model of Terminator robot:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone

The title Sweeper Zone implied to me that this would be a Minesweeper clone. Actually, no. Your robot’s job is to maneuver into traffic and clean up scrap metal. He can only collect one piece at a time and then return it to the salvage point. It’s not especially difficult and it gets boring very, very quickly. Fortunately, Pop-Tarts cross-promotion shows up so that I can claim that this is a breakfast food tie-in game:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone — gameplay

Confusingly, each disc has 2 distinct games (along with a robot building factory activity, and Robots movie promotional material). The second game, which does not receive billing on the CD-ROM, is Chop Shop:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone — Chop Shop

Ratchet must catch the falling junk in his box. Catching the Pop-Tarts logo makes the box wider. It feels like something from an Atari 2600 game and frankly gives a bad name to promotional tie-in games.

The second disc is Rescue The Rusties. Again, this disc actually has 2 games. The one that gets mentioned in the title is quite challenging. The object is to navigate the maze and, well, rescue the Rusties, as well as any imperiled Pop-Tarts logos:

There are malicious robots out to get you but you can slow their pursuit by secreting oil slicks.

The second game is Pick-A-Part, a match-3 game! Yes! I’ll have you know that I am well on my way to becoming a grandmaster at this type of game thanks to my continuing practice at Magic Match. The goal of this game is to keep the gears away from he roving robot at the bottom of the screen.

Pop-Tarts Presents Rescue The Rusties — Pick-A-Part game

Even with my considerable skill, I couldn’t complete the second level at this game. Back to Magic Match, I suppose. It should be noted that Pop-Tarts logos were absent from this last game.

The other game in the series is Rodney Copperbottom And The Robot City Heroes. And I think you know that I am willing to expend considerable effort (well, I’ll frequent thrift shops and eBay anyway) in order to obtain it, along with the other prized Gap Kids game.

See Also:

Snow Day: The GapKids Quest — a promo game done well
Taco Bell Tek Kids games — promo games done reasonably well

At MobyGames:

RE4: Assignment Ada

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

Back in June, I resolved to try to actually play a game that I could enjoy, a known quantity like Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube. This past weekend, I finally made good on that resolution.

I completed RE4 nearly 2 years ago and then swiftly moved on to something else in my life. When I powered on the game this past weekend, I saw some new menu options that I vaguely recall being unlocked after winning the game. One of the bonus options is called Assignment Ada wherein the player assumes the role of a supporting character named Ada Wong who is tasked with a subquest of collecting 5 MacGuffins.

This <10min quick play on YouTube has me thinking that I worked entirely too hard to clear the Assignment Ada bonus game:

This speed run is predicated on the fact that the enemies in the game are famously slow on the uptake and don’t react quick enough while the player sprints right past them.

The first time I reached the boss of the assignment, I thought he might have been impossible to beat. Much of the battle seemed to consist of so-called quicktime events where failure to press a random pair of buttons at the precise moment when prompted results in immediate death. RE4 is generally a quite popular and accomplished title, which makes it that much more ironic that it has 2 big features that receive so much criticism, including these quicktime events (the other point of contention is the escort mission, which I am probably alone in enjoying). These event junctures instantly transform a game of skill into a game of chance.

I quit in frustration the first night and gave it another go the next night. This time, I mostly honed my combat technique and studied the most efficient and, more importantly, stylized methods for dispatching foes. When I made it to the boss, I was extremely well-equipped with both weapons and health items. With enough practice I finally took him down.

And then I watched the above video and figured out that there was a much quicker way to take care of him. Figures. Reminds me of a certain boss in Resident Evil: Code Veronica (this guy, the Nosferatu)– first time around, he finally succumbed after I threw every single weapon in my cache at him. The second time through the game, I finally noticed the remarkably useful, specialized weapon nearby that the game was doing everything it could to nudge me towards.

Anyway, the good news is that Resident Evil 4 is still fun.

See Also:

Reliving Resident Evil for the GameCube

At MobyGames:

Resident Evil 4

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Category: Action Games

Metal Gear Barbie

Terk & Tantor Power Lunch

G-Nome Horse Reckoning

Layers Of Insults

RE4: Assignment Ada