Retro review: 3 in Three

Ah, now THIS is the reason I'll never be sorry I was a Mac Gamer.

3 in Three was developed by Cliff Johnson and published by Inline Design about 15 years ago. It deals with the trials and tribulations of "3", a number cruely forced out of a spreadsheet during a power surge and lost in the land of the letters. The game consists of 90 or so puzzles, arranged in chains. About 20 are open to you at first, and as you complete those, more open up.

The graphics and storyline are top-notch - Johnson imbues every character and scene with an electric, surreal sort of personality that looks perfectly fine even in this day and age. The writing is honestly funny, although people who hate puns will probably groan a few times.

The puzzles themselves are great. They range from sliding block puzzles to timed "Memory" style while about half of them can't be put into any category at all. They're extremely well designed - in fact, I'll go into one of them for a sec:


In the puzzle "This That and the Other", you're presented with the following letters:




If you click on any of the letters in the top row, they, along with the leftmost letter in the middle row, move left to right. So if you clicked it once, the E would move down to where the A is, the A back to where the other A is, and so on. The middle row, when clicked merely moves from left to right, while the bottom row along with the last letter in the middle row cycles from left to right. Your task is to figure out what three words these letters make up, and maneuver them into the correct positions. (if you want the answer, highlight the next sentence) The answer is ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, and MINERAL.
The game ends with a GIGANTIC meta-puzzle, which requires you to go back to all the previous puzzles and comb them for clues. It's a gigantic tour-de-force of a puzzle that will entail an entire ream of scratch paper to solve.

This game seriously is almost perfect - the puzzles are well-designed, the humor shines through everything, and it's just damned good fun. I extremely urge everyone to play this game as soon as possible. And thankfully, you can! Legally! Download the client here from the author's website, and a System 7 emulator here (It doesn't require a ROM, so it's %100 legal).

Cliff Johnson is also about to release his next game, A Fool and His Money (sequel to his earlier, also excellent game A Fool's Errand) sometime soon. I know I'm going to order it.

5 Great Boss Battles

Today we'll take a look at 5 fun boss battles. When selecting these, I purposefully didn't go for difficulty or personality of the character. There are way too many interchangable boss battles that boil down to "find his weak spot and hit it" or "do mor damage than they do." No, for this I selected 5 boss fights that are unique, interesting, or just plain fun.



Raphael the Raven from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

This is one of the few boss battles that I actively look forward to when I play Yoshi's Island. The battle takes place on a small moon that turns under you as you run - in effect, the screen rotates while you remain the same. It's a great sensation, and they way you damage Raphael is quite innovative as well.



Hydra from God of War

This boss fight technically lasts the entire level, and it deserves the word epic. It's you versus 3 giant heads that you have to slam into walls, bash into the deck, and eventually drive the mast of your ship through. It's challenging, fun, and it feels like a Hollywood movie. The designers, by making sure this was the last part of the game they worked on, ensured that players instantly fell in love with the game.



Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid

This one's in here just because it's the best example of the utter mindbendingness that Kojima puts into the MGS series. He's literally unbeatable because he can read your mind, unless you plug the controller into the second port. While I have no idea how someone is supposed to figure that out normally, it's that sort of meta thinking that really impresses me.


The Tentacles from Half-Life

These things almost gave me a nervous breakdown. The constant stress of sneaking around, knowing that the the slightest sound would give me away, then doing one tiny thing wrong and watching that huge tentacle go WHACK . . .

*shudder*

Very effective, relying on brains much more than reflexes.


Ugh-Zan III from Serious Sam
Most end-game bosses are big, but this guy is BIG. The game states he's 330 feet tall, and I'm certainly willing to believe it. He towers over everything, and your most powerful weapon barely scratches him. Obviously there has to be a trick to beating him, but it's still quite probably the biggest boss ever in a video game.

Where are all the run-n-gun shooters?

As I look at the modern game industry, there's a genre of game that used to be huge that seems to have died out almost completely. I'm not talking about adventure games (although that's true as well) but fast paced shooters.

Starting with wolfenstein 3d and Doom, fast paced shooters (or FPFPS's) emphasized reaction time and good aim over caution and stealth. Good FPFPS's though nothing of dropping you into a room surrounded by 20 enemies along with a rocket launcher, and letting you sort it out. Storylines were mostly tossed out the window in favor of better explosions, bigger weapons, and a cheerful over-the-top sense of humor. The pinnacle of the genre (in my opinion) was Serious Sam: The Second Encounter which delivered a pitch-perfect blend of carnage, adrenaline and humor. Duke3d, Quake, and even Painkiller are all notable examples of this.

But it seems like most FPS's nowadays don't come anywhere near this formula - Rainbow Six and GRAW are too focused on tactics and realism, Gears of War is too concerned with cover, and even Halo and Half Life 2 have way too many story bits that interfere with all the action. The last one I can remember would be Serious Sam 2, and the last good one I can remember is Painkiller.

Which is a shame. Not that I don't like the more slow-paced FPS's, but the sheer adrenaline rush of a good FPFPS is a rare thing indeed. It becomes much less story that you have to set blocks of time aside to experience, but literally something you can hop onto for 5 minutes, get a quick fix, and quit right back out. I still keep SS:the Second Encounter on my hard drive for when I've had a bad day and want to blow stuff up for a few minutes. Plus you can't beat the sheer thrill of standing atop a veritable mountain of defeated opponents.

So why the drought? I suspect it's because of 2 things: consoles and Half Life. Half Life really melded story to gameplay such that most games intersperse firefights with story sequences, thereby changing the flavor. I also believe that console FPS's require a slower paced game due to the inherant limitations of the controllers - you cant suddenly turn 130 degrees to the right to catch an enemy sneaking up on you, for instance.

Is there any luck on the horizon? Maybe Crysis, but I feel that's going to be story oriented. I'd wish for Croteam to do another one, but they screwed up Serious Sam 2 pretty bad, so I don't know. We'll see if anyone manages to bring back this fondly-remembered subgenre.

Comic reviews for 11/29

Batman 658: Uh, what? I have no idea what happened there at the end. Andy Kubert's art is nice and all, but the whole problem with Morrison writing (that I alluded to in my New X-Men review) is that when Batman speaks, I don't hear Batman. I hear Morrison riffing on whatever he wants. **

Blade 03: God help me, I'm liking this title. Not a fan at all of Chaykin's art, but Guggenheim is just going so completely over the top with this series it can't help but raise a smile on my face. ***

Captain America 24: Meh. The Hydra stuff was sort of interesting, but I don't care about Sharon Carter at all. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing that I was able to predict the final reveal about 5 pages before the end. **1/2

52 Week 30: OK. Whoever came up with the revamp of the 10-Eyed Man (Morrison, I'm looking at you) deserves to be either shot or rewarded, I can't decide which. I don't really like any issue with Batwoman in it, and if they're going down the path of Nightwing wooing her, I can only forsee bad things. **

Eternals 05: How long has it been since issue 4? I had to really struggle to remember what the hell happened - there's a serious disconnect between where I remember Sprite being at the end of 4, and what happens in 5. JRJr is lovely as ever, but this whole series is mostly just confusing. **1/2

Fantastic Four: The End 02. Dammit people. The best "The End" stories (Hulk, Punisher) are one shots that show the endpoint of the character in a nice simple short story. The worst (Wolverine, X-Men) take way too long and throw in a bunch of unimportant elements to tell some sort of story that doesn't matter. Alan Davis is going the latter route, and he pays more attention to the Avengers than the FF. The art is great, but the story is really lacking. *1/2

Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man 14: The Ben Reily idea is somewhat cute, but why do people keep trying to tell us that the Vulture is a credible threat? He flies. And is old. That's about it. *1/2

Mischief Night 01: It's from Avatar, so you know what that means. Two outcasts come back from the dead to kill the popular people who made fun of them, while an earlier survivor can't get anyone to believe her. Sex and violence ensues. It's decent for what it is: a splatter movie in comic form. **

Nextwave 10: WTF? That was a random 12 page interlude (although the Machine Man one was quite funny). The "solution" was obvious and sort of dumb, but the rest of the issue is crazy, weird, and so very much fun. I'm so very very pissed off that this is ending. ***

Onslaught Reborn 01: The project that absolutely no-one asked for. Is it as bad as you'd think? Not quite. Loeb's writing is okay from moment to moment, other than the fact that his Onslaught and his actions make absolutely no sense at all. Liefeld's art still isn't going to win any awards (other than from Wizard, maybe) but it's not his worst by a long shot. Readable, but don't seek it out. *

Sensational Spider-Man 32: Focuses on Mary Jane and her Civil War travails. It tries to show Mary Jane's resiliance and devotion to Peter, but doesn't quite pull it off. The dream sequence especially was jarring, and the meeting with Sue was problematic, considering what happens at the end of Civil War 04 (especially considering Mary Jane could reach her by cell). *1/2

Stan lee meets Dr. Doom: Quite probably the weakest of these - Lee writes Dr Doom like a jokester, which is inconsistant with everything (even Lee's creation of him). Loeb and Guinisses' backup is pretty weak as well, offering nothing new. Art is nice though. **

Teen Titans 41: They made him an entirely new body, and he still doesn't have his voice back?! A mostly confusing mess of an issue, it relies too much on tropes (will she kill) and dredging up things we all want to forget (Cassie and Robin's kiss, the "let's clone Con-El again" thing). *1/2

What if? Wolverine: Enemy of the State: Wolverine killing everyone and everything. Some moments are nicely shocking (Cap, for instance) and it plays out decently like a horror movie, but I think the ending isn't a plausible resolution. **

X-Men 193. Man, I'm starting to really turn around on Chris Bachalo's art - it's still way too confusing half the time, but the other half can be really pretty. We get a (sort of) resolution to the Children plot, and it's first revealed (as far as I know) that they aren't evolved - they just use advanced tech. I'd really like it if that had been pointed out earlier. This arc was sort of meh, but I hold high hopes for future ones. **1/2

Hopefully I'll have another video-game post later on.