Old Men Gaming

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Overture: No Shame in This Game

The guys over at Black Shell Media know what they’re about. They are about great Role Playing Games, plain and simple. First, they brought us an incredibly in-depth, hilariously fun if somewhat bizarre, game with ASCII graphics with SanctuaryRPG: Black Edition. That game isn’t Overture, by any means. Overture is about as far from SanctuaryRPG as a game can be, and still be called a Role Playing Game. Don’t mistake this for a criticism or indictment, this isn’t that. This is to express how vast the role playing genre can be, and how flawlessly Black Shell Media have traversed that vastness with just two titles.

Overture doesn’t have an in-depth story; you pick a character, you get dropped into a dungeon full of enemies, kill them dead and escape. Complicated, right? One wouldn’t think so. One would be wrong, so very wrong. Overture is more in depth when it comes to character choice; giving you four classes of six characters to choose from. Each character has different attacks and secondary skills. The control scheme is also flawlessly simple, using the WSAD for directional control, your mouse for aiming, left clicking to attack, and right clicking to pick items up or use your secondary ability. That combined with the random dungeon generation leads to an incredibly challenging and unique trek through the dungeons created around you. You’ll never get the same run twice, if you are fortunate enough to escape once.

The four classes you can claim are Warriors, Rogues, Mages, or Shamans. I could go into the six subclasses of each class, but it’s much more fun to find out the differences on your own. They will change the play style of the game significantly; find one that works for you from each class. You can unlock all the subclasses and upgrade your favorite subclasses with gold you find in-game. I tend to prefer the Duelist or the Paladin; both of whom are ranged and have a fun secondary ability.

As a fun aside, you can also find minions while running around staying alive. They are going to be kicking it in boxes and will be thrilled to fight to the death for you if you only let them out. We don’t know where they got kidnapped from, or why the sick bastards enjoy kidnapping chefs and archers so much. Sadly for them, they tend to live out their final days as meat shields for you. It’s better than dying trapped in a box, right?

You also get to equip yourself with a sword, shield, armor, ring, and charm. These don’t make you attack or defend or magic any differently, but do allow you to do each better. Most of them have a passive ability that will help you out. Those passives are all percentage chances of doing something fun; like causing a poison cloud or dagger nova, there might even be some that allow you to summon skeletons to walk into and hurt things. You may want to stick with weaker equipment that has better passive abilities. I’ll leave you to experiment with different bling and effects.

The price tag belies just how much fun this game is. For just five dollars, you get hours of gameplay, twenty-four classes, and nigh infinite replayability.  While it isn’t going to be staggeringly in depth, there is no shame in this game. It will beat you about the face all day long and smile the whole time. We both know you’ve spent a lot more money on a lot worse games, and without knowing your library, you should be ashamed of yourself. You know what you did, and now, so do I. It’s the perfect time to remedy that, however. Just hop on Steam, buy Overture and enjoy for hours and hours. Other companies should take note; Black Shell Media does it right. (That one’s for free, you can print that.)

PLindmark

[oldmengaming]

Dungeon Souls: The Most Fun You’ll Have Dying

Nintendo started with Mario, Sega had Sonic, Sony burst onto the scene with Crash Bandicoot; each huge developer started with one game, one character that they would found empires with. Every young game developer starts with a single game; too many of them fall through the cracks or fail to get off the ground. Every developer started as an indie developer. Will Mike Studios, the creator of Dungeon Souls, soar to the heights of Nintendo or Sony? They just might. Is Dungeon Souls the game they will ride to such great heights? It’s a hell of a start.

I was pleasantly surprised with Dungeon Souls, brought to us by Mike Studios and Black Shell Media. It’s an 8-bit hack n slash dungeon crawler, with a premise that’s beyond simple; you control one of three fallen heroes searching for a mysterious orb that will revive them (and maybe a few buddies). Still following? Great, that’s it. The game gives you a choice from one of three tried and true character classes; the healthy and powerful Berserker, the accurate Archer who can pepper many targets, or the fast and backstabby Thief. You’re also able to unlock four other classes by defeating enemies, finding a certain item, or beating the bosses thrown your way…and collecting the fabled mysterious orb, of course.

Standing in your way to freedom is the Gate Keeper, who keeps the gates of the afterlife closed…most of the time. He throws up obstacles in each of the twelve floors; making you activate summoning circles that, you guessed it, summon beasties to destroy before moving on. Every three levels, you have to fight a boss hell bent on preventing your revival. Also worth noting is that the Gate Keeper shows up to suck the life (or whatever keeps you going) from your body if you hang around one stage too long.

Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Dead wrong (excuse the pun). The challenge in making great games, or anything really, is balancing difficulty with fun. This seemingly innocent little game is hard, brutally hard. It doesn’t look like it should be, but that isn’t stopping it from eviscerating me more often than I’d like to admit. You do level up your stats and skills and can collect any number of absurd items, and drink potions of questionable origin. Much like the Duck of Doom though, you really should know better than to pick things up in a dungeon…especially strangely colored potions. These are a few of the things that ‘should’ help you out in your quest back to the land of the living.

Dungeon Souls won’t revolutionize the face of gaming or end racial problems or stop world hunger, I’d love seeing a single entity that could do even one of those things, but this will give you a damn fun game to play. It’s one of the more fun half hours you’ll spend dying. It won’t take hours to dominate this game, but I bet even Lazarus would have liked some help on his trip back to life. The best part so far? The dev team; everyone over at Mike Studios actually listens to the Steam community and they work constantly to satisfy each of our fickle little desires, in relation to Dungeon Souls, at least

I can’t wait to play the next game from Mike Studios and Black Shell Media.

Check it out. Yesterday.

[oldmengaming]

Boson X

Boson X is really hard.  It is a really hard game.  You won’t beat this game, probably ever.  You might not even be able to beat this game.  You can get to the last level of the game, and that would be pretty amazing. It is a true test of skill.  It has instant replay ability.  There is just a really great feeling when you play the game of just constantly making the right decision at the last second and realize that you just avoided instantaneous death.  That part is a blast.  Music is really good.  Got a really banging sound track that gets you into the different levels.  I think you’ll really like it.

[oldmengaming]

Mega Man 2 - Recommendation

Mega Man 2, dude,

If you've never played mega man 2 you've got to play Mega Man 2.  Mega man 2 is one of the best side scrolling action games ever made.  The level of challenge you will run into as you play the game is beautifully crafted.  Any errors in play tend to be your own fault. It really allows you to put yourself against a challenge and see how you fair.  You learn quickly if you are doing well or not from the game and that adds a lot.  

The music is banging, the graphics are tight, and the characters are all really interesting.  There is a lot of challenge for when you play the game based upon which abilities you decide to use.  The abilities are all very unique and add a lot to the game. The most difficult part to get through is the very first boss, where you don't have a power yet.  You may want to consider looking up a list of good orders to go through the bosses in, but really there are only a few bosses that are overly difficult without other powers and luckily the game isn't that long, the levels themselves are not very long so if you get to the boss and realize you can't beat them you can come back later without a huge loss of time.  If you like fast, twitch action, compelling platforming puzzles, and difficult but fair boss patterns to learn, Mega Man 2 is absolutely a great game for you to play.  

Edit: Metal Man is the fucking coolest.  You can't not love Metal Man.  Metal Man's power is defiantly one of the best powers in a side scrolling game. You feel like a total fucking bad-ass, and Metal Man looks like a bad-ass using it.  As a note Dr. Wiley’s Castle presents some of the hardest platforming in any game I am aware of.  Specifically a dragon boss that you need to be ready for when you play it.  It is a very good challenge to test your skills before the final battles.  I wish you luck, and have fun.

-Jedediah