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The Simpsons: Bart Vs The Space Mutants
by kojak123
I took the plunge recently and picked up an old Mega Drive console on the cheap.
Friends and family, they all said I was mad, and I was starting to believe them - until I plugged it in and that magic 'Sega' screen popped up.
For the price of a new x-box game I snagged a handful of Mega drive games on a popular pre-owned site. ... They arrived and the nostalgia crept in as i sifted through the titles, each conjuring up images of a mis-spent youth, until a familiarly bright cover popped into view. Bart Simpson himself in one of the finest platform games of the 1990's.
I first bought this game brand new in 1992 and at the time it was cutting edge, fun and eminently playable. What shocked me was the fact that it was so damn easy to pick up and play almost 2 decades later! While the graphics have obviously slipped to the standard you'd now see on a mobile phone, the game is simply addictive. There are no save points, no seemingly invincible lead character and no abundance of weapons and goodies to make the game a cake-walk; just Bart, his x-ray specs and a few ingeniously used 'weapons' such as cherry bombs and rockets. A handful of extra lives is all the help you get (unless you're fortunate enough to discover some of the games secret extra life locations...). Fail, and you fail. Your only option being to reload and start again from the very beginning!
Five fiendishly difficult levels stand between you and that elusive end sequence screen, and believe me when I tell you that the sense of accomplishment you get is beyond 99% of today's offerings!
The game stands the test of time not because it's particularly cutting edge, but because it's fun! It is an insight to the world of the Simpsons which you just don't get from the newer games. From prank-calling Moe's Tavern to chucking Cherry Bombs outside the retirement home, this is classic Simpsons and should be picked up and played today! Given the current prices, there really is no excuse not to.
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Runescape
by Thebaker50
Runescape is an online mmorpg (mass multiplayer online role playing game), similar to World of warcraft. The idea is that you make a character, and progress them (moving them up in levels of various skills, like strength, woodcraft, cooking, and so on, completing quests, and gaining resources as you do. But you can do this with other ... players, and join forces to do quests, or fight against them. I am going to split this review into 2 parts, the first part will be the old game, and the second part will discuss some of the newer things.
Ok, basically in this game, you can play for free, and its all online, you don't need to download. But as a free member, you don't get nearly as many benefits, its way harder to get resourses or level up, and you can't even do some actions (like a paying member can train agility and run over a log, a free member cannot). Also certain foods cannot be cooked, certain metal ores cannot be mined, and so on. Anyway, its kinda annoying, and I used to play for a long time as a free member, and basically it was not fun knowing everyone else could easily take you if they were a paying member.
In the old game, you could also go into the wildy, where other players would attack you, and where the monsters would be more likely to attack you. This place used to be really scarey, especially as a free member, because if you died you would loose everything, so you might consider taking weaker items, which in turn would make you more likely to die! But this was one fun aspect of the game, trying to form raiding parties to raid unsuspecting people in the wildy, or trying to sneak past and get some of the treasures hidden in there.
However, this one cool feature in the game has ben removed, now there are PvP servers, where the whole server is just full of people fighting. Its really rubbish, because you just end up with everyone fighting around the spawn points, and over 90% of the map just being empty of other people. its terrible (I know this because my brother carried on playing after me, and I tried it out just for this review!)
Anyway, for a short period of time I was a member, and suddenly the whole game sort of opened up, and it seemed pretty good, with all these different worlds and such. But I sort of realised that £3 a month for a game with terrible graphics, and a bit of a lame combat system (hit, hit, hit, hit, hit), or cast, cast, cast, or shoot, shoot shoot, well you get the point, didn't seem worth it, especially with other games out there in this field. I would say this is a good game if you are unsure if mmorpg is for you, and want to just try it out, but beyond that this game is a bit pointless. If you like this game, try out guildwars (but there is now gw2, but i have not played this so no idea if it is any good), i found that to be a much better game.
Overall then I give this game 2/5, for bad combat system, too many locked features for free players, and annoying graphics. And the price is a bit high. I gave it a star though for at least having a completely free to play section though, a lot of games do not have this.
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