E is for....

Ecco: Defender of the Future

Megadrive

Prior to Defender of the Future there were three Ecco the Dolphin games released of which I own two off but like with this one I’ve never played any of them. I decided to go with the Dreamcast version as in all honesty I had just finished playing Evil Dead and already had the Dreamcast set up but I’m really pleased that I went with this version.

Even now the game looks and plays superbly. The controls are easy to use and of what I played the tranquillity was amazing and in all honesty I probably spent too much of the 15 minutes just swimming around taking things in. I imagine with the storyline (aliens attack earth and Dolphins and Humans unite to stop them!!) the tranquillity will disappear quite a bit but nether the less I imagine that this will still be a good game to play.

There is not really that much more I can say about this game as I didn’t really play the actual game enough to comment which is a shame but then I suppose that can also tell you a lot about the game that I was immersed in it so much.

Within the 15 minutes: Had rescued the baby whale.

Will I play it again? Yes at some point.

Eternal Champions

Megadrive

As far as I’m aware Street Fighter II was released before or around the time of Eternal Champions which if it was then there should be absolutely no excuse for how bad this game is.

Tactically the game can be quite decent or annoying depending on which way you look at it as the AI does a hell of a lot of blocking and you cannot just rush in and beat them to submission like a lot of other fighters but this also means that after a while you can start to feel quite frustrated as you just want to beat them and move on. This also means that fights can be quite easy as all you need to do is work out the opponent’s pattern and then stand and wait. When fighting Larcen he had a move where he flips over and kicks. A couple of kicks and I had figured out what to wait for and just smacked him each and every time after standing waiting.

The most annoying thing though was after you lose a match. There are three standard things that you expect from a fighting game when you lose a match (not including a quote) and they are the continue screen, the character selection screen and the fighter you lost to to be the opponent you are going to fight when you restart. Eternal Champions has none of those and when you lose you just go straight to your fighter with no option to continue or exit, no option to select a different character and the worst of all is that you actually get pushed back a couple of fights and have to redo some fights, ridiculous.

Within the 15 minutes: I think I had gotten to fight 7 but when I lost I got pushed back a few.

Will I play it again? No.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem

GameCube

I’ve heard a lot about Eternal Darkness and how good it is and was tempted to leave it out of this list as one day in the future I will get round to playing it but as that may still be a while yet I thought I would give it a shot and I’m glad that I did.

Jumping straight into the action with a scene where you are stuck in a room holding a shotgun which comes in handy for the skeletons around you the game then slows down for a lot of exposition to set up the story. It’s a good move as it lets you calm down after the initial scene and gives you a chance to get your bearings. The story at first is set in the present but after another section with you searching a house you find a book which then flashes back a few thousand years for more story and then here you again take control of the action to set in events to connect it all together.

It’s an interesting move to be controlling characters in both the past and the present as it really gives you a sense of being involved in the whole story and not just having information given to you via books, papers, people etc. Hopefully the trend will continue and later in the game you get to control different characters from the past. One day in the future i’ll find out.

Within the 15 minutes: Had completed Chapter one and was searching the mansion.

Will I play it again? A definite yes.

Evil Dead: Hail to the King

Dreamcast

I really wanted to like this game due to the fact that it’s the Evil Dead but the 15 minutes that I played were unfortunately rather boring and not very good at all with clunky movements and very generic enemies.

I’ll start with the movement. The actual controls for controlling Ash were ok; it was the actual movement of Ash which was horrendous. Every time he moved it looked like he had a rod up his backside and when he ran it was just ridiculous, it looked like he had been electrocuted and was then running around on adrenaline. Next up is the enemies. I encountered two enemies which were a generic skeleton ghost and a generic skeleton. Both were annoying and not worth killing at all. I just ended up running past most of them to save time and pointless hacking.

Another thing was that in the time I played I didn’t actually do anything except for go around picking up things like fuel for the chainsaw and mushrooms. The plot of the game seems to be to collect pages of writing to stop the deadites but after collecting a page in the cabin I then spent the remainder of the time aimlessly wandering around outside picking stuff up.

Within the 15 minutes: Just wandering around collecting stuff.

Will I play it again? I want to say yes because it’s Evil Dead but not likely at the moment.

Exhumed

Sega Saturn

A FPS set in Egypt instead of your standard spaceship, futuristic city or whatever is the norm these days. Slightly different setting but by the looks of it still a standard ole FPS with corridors and enemies spewing out at you.

Talking of the enemies, 15 minutes I played and all I came across was scorpions and birds which is just as bad if not worse than the enemies in Evil Dead. The guns I picked up (including a machine gun) were far superior than the enemies were and took them out far too easily. Saying that though, the basic weapon of the knife was awful and seemed to miss every enemy that I swung it at.

From what I played there wasn’t really much to praise or criticise as I just mainly spent the time wandering around corridors searching for symbols so that I could go back and open doors to progress on to more corridors where hopefully there would actually be some ammo for the weapons which seems to be very limited.

Within the 15 minutes: Had not got very far in all honesty as was searching for symbols.

Will I play it again? Maybe at some point in the future.