Thoughts by std (31 May 2004) – C64
Weeeh :)
Some of you older guys may remember the…ahem, good old days of the highschool. Parties&stuff. Nostalgic smile already? Oh, come on, you can’t tell me you never, but never had a C64 at a party. Nah, I still don’t believe you. Truth is, C64s are pretty exotic these days… my CBM gets more attention than me at my parties – though the bastard doesn’t get half as many kisses :evil:.
Sorry, ramblin' about parties again. Meh…
Actually, I started talking about parties because I was giving it some thinking about the party games: those games meant to be played at parties, when people run out of beer and get tired of music and dancing. And Blood 2 (sub-titled “Back to Brutality”) is such a game.
The idea is simple. There are three rows on the screen, and people come from left to right. You have to shoot them. Heheh… isn’t that cute?
Actually, the nice thing about this is that they don’t just fall like ducks (bang! and you got your lunch), dependending on where you shot them, various things will happen. Unlike modern gaming, headshots mean the lowest amount of satisfaction – they just die, while if you shoot their legs, they will crawl, and if you shoot their arms, they’ll walk slower and leave blood behind them.
What makes this game fall, however, is the fact that it’s not quite polished – it was probably written for a few parties, and it didn’t get too much attention. You can see that in the graphics, first of all. While the C64 wasn’t quite the computer for multimedia (eh, Mr Creosote? :D ), I’ve seen Speccy games that look better than this. Even more, I’ve kindda failed to make the game work with my C64’s mouse – though I’m not absolutely sure this is the game’s fault (hey, 18-year-old hardware can get screwed). The funny thing (which may be an issue about the graphics…and if it is, great job!) is the motion blur that appears in the screenshots I’ve taken using CCS64. I’m absolutely sure I haven’t taken motion-blurred screenshots so far :)). Of course, the look is quite amateurish, and you don’t really see it in the game, but it’s worth a bit of applause, as it saves the game graphics a bit. Actually, I think the really bad thing about the graphics is the colors, not the graphics themselves (which are quite sluggish, but hey, it’s C64) – the blood looks like marmalade in this game :)).
The sound is not exactly better, but it does its job quite well, if you can forgive the fact that whoever made the music had a bit of an under-sensibility against the distortioned sound, CCS made it sound well, but for my C64 I preffered to turn music off.
Overall, this is a pretty good party game, fun to play above all. Actually, I had some fun with it at the last party, so I’m thinking about writing a remake…who knows, maybe I’ll even send it to Mr. Creosote, heheh…