Late to the Game(s) - Retro! Reissued! Remastered! Oh my!

  Sonic the Hedgehog turns 30 this year. If he were human, the eponymous speedster – “born” today, June 23, 1991, when his first game released for Sega Genesis – would be a Millennial. Like his much maligned generation, while you may love him or hate him, there is no denying the speedy blue hedgehog’s cultural significance.  That original Sonic the Hedgehog game has spawned a number of sequel games, in addition to a comic book series published by Archie Comics, at least two animated shows (the original, poorly drawn cartoon featuring the voice of Steve Urkel, Jaleel White, and a later series with higher production value and an anime inspired style), and a live action/CGI movie.  The story told over the course of those games, shows, comics, and film is convoluted, inconsistent, and sometimes downright confusing. The basic premise is that Doctor Robotnik, née Eggman, is an evil genius who wants to take over the world (or the multiverse) and Sonic and friends have to...

  It’s free games time again!  Honestly, it’s free games time all the time if you do a little searching – and take advantage of services you might already be paying for like Amazon Prime that include gaming assets and full games. (Seriously, check out gaming.amazon.com if you have a Prime account and get your free games.) This week, though, we’re looking at the Epic Games Store again. Instead of the typical one or two free games, beginning Thursday, Epic will feature three free games to claim and download. There are no catches. No hidden costs. Just create an Epic Games account – you can even log in with your already existing PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, or social media accounts – and download the games. They are yours to keep forever. The first is the complete collection of the Deponia series. The adventure comedy, with plenty of puzzle elements, is rated M for Mature gamers age 17 and up. So, despite the cartoon like visuals, this isn’t a freebie you...

 Playing collectible card games on the computer I graduated high school in 1993, the same year Magic: The Gathering was released, and I’ve been intrigued by the collectible card game ever since. I bought some of the cards – though I didn’t really have anyone to play with back then – read some of the comics and novels, and really enjoyed the idea behind the concept even if I didn’t really play.  Several years later I’d make a friend who was really into the game. He helped me build useful decks from the random cards I’d collected over the decade since the game launched, gave me some strategy pointers, and really helped me understand how nuanced the game could be.  I’d also play several different video game versions of the game, starting with the PlayStation 3 version of Magic: The Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalkers . I found that I actually preferred playing against a computer opponent rather than a flesh and blood opponent. The thing is, there aren’t t...

 Modern old-school RPG free on Epic store this week Obsidian entertainment are hardly neophytes in the gaming industry. The studio has worked on a number of licensed RPG (role-playing game) properties since opening its doors in 2003, including Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II and Neverwinter Nights 2 , both sequels of BioWare games; Fallout: New Vegas , a spin-off of the Bethesda properties released between Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 ; and South Park: The Stick of Truth , an irreverent turn-based RPG title published by Ubisoft.  In 2015, however, the studio was looking at developing its own original IP (intellectual property) and turned to Kickstarter to fund it. The resulting game – Pillars of Eternity – was a smash hit, earning a Metacritic score of 89 and spawning expansions and sequels of its own. The real-time turn based RPG, with its overhead isometric view and gameplay that allows you to pause the action while you issue individual orders to your party,...

If you've ever wanted to swim with whales, explore Atlantean style undersea ruins, or try your hand at hide and seek with a shark, this week's free game on the Epic Games store might be right up your alley.  Abzû is an under water exploration adventure game with a gorgeous art style. If you've played Journey or Flower, you're going to recognize the art style of Abzû . That's because it's from the same art director, Matt Nava. After helping create the flowing world of airborne beauty in Flower , and the intense sand sliding desert adventure of Journey for thatgamecompany, Nava started his own studio, Giant Squid. Abzû is Nava's first project from the new developer, and it's in some ways an underwater version of Journey.  If you've played Journey, you know that the game tells the story of a lost civilization, through images and pictographs, as the player makes his way across a starkly beautiful desertscape. Along the way the player has to navigate p...

Right now, in celebrate of Sega's 60th Anniversary, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is free to claim on Steam.   Go claim your copy, fire up your desktop or laptop, and enjoy some high speed retro fun. Rated E for Everyone.  Read more about the history of Sega in our Late to the Game(s) column at Carter County Times .

Why don't narrative games get the respect they deserve? I'm a fan of games that tell a story. In fact, back when a certain famous film critic was claiming that games would never be, and could never be, art, I argued that some of the more compelling stories being told today were being told in video game form. I still stand behind that. Good games can get players invested in a story the same way that films and novels can. The original Red Dead Redemption , for instance, addressed its title theme of redemption, as well as forgiveness, mercy,selflessness and sacrifice in a way that would not have been as compelling from a film. The player makes those decisions that lead to a penultimate climax, one that – if they play like I did – they replayed over and over trying to change before accepting. How they played the game, and whether they stuck to the straight and narrow or bent the law to get there, might have influenced their feelings about whether main character John Marston deserve...

Exploring the myths and legends of India Some games are hard to put down. You know you have work to do. You know you have limited time to finish it. But you want to try just one more time to take down that boss before you take a break.  Raji: An Ancient Epic is one of those games. Available now on the Nintendo Switch , and launching later this year on other major platforms , Raji is one of the more compelling button smashers I've played in a while. It tells the story of our eponymous hero, the acrobat Raji, and her brother Golu, a puppeteer. The carnival performers are in the midst of celebrating the feast of Rakhsha Bandhan when the story Golu has been telling, about the rise and  fall of a race of demons, comes to life. Golu, wearing a demon mask to startle the other children watching his puppet show, finds himself swept up by actual demons who are stealing away the children for an as yet unnamed purpose. It's then that our heroine is chosen by the goddess Durga to fight ...

Battle Planet – Judgement Day a fun and challenging rogue-lite shooter Sometimes you want a deep story in a video game. Sometimes you want a challenging puzzle. And sometimes, well, sometimes you just want to shoot things and watch them blow up. If that's what you're looking for Battle Planet – Judgement Day – a twin stick shooter, top down, rogue-lite – delivers in spades. The game isn't hard to grasp, but it does take time to master. Different game modes require the player to wipe out all the enemies on the screen, fend off enemies while defusing bombs before they can blow up a significant portion of the plant, or to beat bosses at the end of a planet level. Along the way you pick up various power-ups and weapon mods that can help you stay ahead of enemies or wipe them out in large swathes of death and destruction.  Boss fights are how you unlock new characters, like the Spy. The level-end boss fights, which pit you against various types of new and unique enemies while a...

  For the next 24 hours you can get A Total War Saga: Troy for free from the Epic Games Store . The PC version of the game doesn't have an ESRB rating listed on the game page, but other games in the series have a rating of "T" for Teen. If you've enjoyed other games in the Total War strategy game series, this one - regularly priced at $49.99 - is probably worth checking out at the low price of FREE .  In addition, Epic also has their regular Thursday freebies up today. Remnant: From the Ashes is an "M" for Mature rated action shooter, with co-op or single player game play, from developer Gunfire Games and publisher Perfect World, while their other freebie, The Alto Collection , from developer Team Alto and publisher Snowman, is rated "E" for Everyone.  The Alto Collection bundles Alto's Adventure and Alto's Odyssey , two snowboarding themed Indie adventure/endless runner games that have garnered a lot of attention in their mobile versi...

A family friendly adventure game Sometimes it seems like it's difficult to impossible to find a game that you can find compelling for you, as an adult, and that you don't mind having your kids watch you play, or allowing them to play. I mean, sure, there are the classic platformers for Nintendo featuring a well-known pair of Italian plumber brothers, and the adventures of a certain blue track-star hedgehog who zips around like he's had one too many espresso shots. The Lego games are good for some family couch co-op – and the ones based on popular film franchises give you a fun take on those stories. But even those games have some elements of violence, be it smashing sentient mushrooms underfoot or – literally – knocking the block off a Lego enemy. Sure, there are puzzle games and rhythm games and racing games, but if you want something with a bit of a story line, they're even worse than the E rated platformers.  So, what if I told you there was a game that could appeal ...

Cult classic Chex Quest advertisement/videogame back in HD Back in 1996 I was 21-years-old. I made a lot of questionable decisions that year. It's the privilege of youth, to make questionable decisions. One of mine may or may not have been to buy a box of cereal to get a videogame-cum-advertisement that featured a man dressed like a woven rice cereal, giving Doom the E for Everyone treatment through four or five levels. And yes, children, you had to buy the box of cereal. Not because there was a code inside. No. We had the internet, but it wasn't the internet we have today. It was the internet where you needed to use a landline telephone to connect. It was the internet that, if you picked up that telephone line while someone was online, it sounded like two demon possessed robots having an argument about where to eat dinner. And your sister couldn't get phone calls if you were online, so "you can't tie up the phone all night!" It was the 90s. So you had...

Fullbright Company's exploration adventure game, Tacoma , free this week The space station Tacoma, from the game of the same name.   When I taught a game documentation class as an adjunct at Shawnee State, one of the things I tried to get my students to understand was the way video games have changed over the last 40 years. Many of us older gamers remember the games on our Atari and Nintendo systems as being extremely difficult. There was a time when I thought that was just me being a kid, but going back and attempting to play those games confirmed that – nope – it wasn't just me being a kid. Those games are insanely difficult!  There is a reason for this. The developers of those early home console games were coming at game design from a completely different angle than many modern game designers. When they started developing games, the market was made up of arcade machines. Machines that the proprietors of those arcades wanted you to keep pumping quarters into. Wha...