Monday, February 13, 2006

Diskutieren Ueber die Videospielen

Hey, if kalinara and diamondrock can give us lessons in everyday Japanese, then I feel it's my duty to get a little German into your lives. So for the record, if you don't know how to put an umlaut (two dots, which can be used with "a", "o", or "u") over a letter, such as the "u" in "uber", you can follow it with an "e" and it's equivalent. Also, with German you can pretty much just jam together as many words as you need to to form a noun. So now you know. Moving on.

This post started because when I was reading New Excaliber #4, I couldn't remember where I'd seen the Warwolves before. I was sure it wasn't a comic, and then it occured to me: they were one of the standard henchman-type villains in X-Men:Mojo World on my Sega Game Gear. Couple this with my finding out Jake was dead on about Ultimate Spider-Man (in my case for the Gamecube), it prompted this question: What are the best games you've played based on comic book characters?

Let's face it, this can be a limited field. Liscensed games can often be hastily put together crap, banking on the mindless fanboys. Look at most anime games, like the Full Metal Alchemist games. So the bar isn't all that high. But surely there are a few?

So here's mine, I'm sticking to games I bought. If I only like it enough to rent it, it clearly wasn't that good.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (NES). Man I loved this game. It was the first game I played with co-op abilities, and it was so awesome to team up with a buddy, even if my friends usually died fast and ripped off one of my lives to get back in the game. This one gets bonus points for me getting my father to play it with me. . . once.

Batman Returns (Sega Game Gear) - Admist a horde of awful comic games (Spider-Man and the X-Men:Arcade's Revenge) this one offered the ability to choose one of two routes for most levels. Sure the levels ultimately lead to the same place, but I always believed one was more about dexterity, dodging obstacles, and the other was more about beating up thugs. Never did understand the 20-foot tall robot boss at the end of level three, though.

Spider-Man (N64) - Tied in style-wise with the cartoon of that time. It was my first opportunity to webswing in a 3-D environment. Amazingly, there was actual variation in boss battles. Sometimes you had to just slug it out, sometimes it was about taking the openings you could get, while protecting someone. Other times, you had to run for your life, or sucker them into taking themselves out. Gameplay variety, what an astounding concept!

What's been an enjoyable gaming experience for you?

4 comments:

Chris said...

I'm gonna go with two:

1) Adventures of Batman and Robin for the SNES; based on the animated series, with a decent story, teamwork, and interesting puzzles to boot.

2) X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Sega Genesis. Hardcore X-Men action, with the bonus ability to play as Magneto!

Jake said...

X-men Legends and X-Men Legends 2. Worth the price if only for the ability to change the uniforms. I've been planning to do a write up of them and of Punisher since doing that USM review.

thekelvingreen said...

I don't know if this was a worldwide release, but Batman: the Movie on the c64 was superb. a bit of platform beat-em-up action, some driving, and a couple of puzzles too. Great graphics, especially for the era.

Otherwise, nothing jumps out, although I do enjoy just swinging around town in Spider-Man 2 on the PS2. I don't much like the main game, but just swinging about is good fun.

Jon said...

X-Men Legends 2, if solely because Iron Man's a hidden character and he's probably more powerful than whatever three other guys you team him with put together, and I find that hilarious since it's an X-Men game and all. Also because a sick little part of me has always wanted to play as Deadpool in a videogame.