JD's Videogame Hall of Shame Part 5: Command & Conquer Renegade

Anticipation is a powerful emotion. It's what makes Christmas so much fun for kids. It's what makes the time between booking a holiday and actually going on holiday pass so quickly. It's what runs half the world of game magazines and websites, the part dedicated to previews and news stories.

However, just like the train set that turns out to be a jumper, or the holiday where you get sunburned, anticipation is at the beck and call of reality. Or rather, prepare to be disappointed. Most of the games on this list are infamous because they were so massively over-hyped or anticipated that the end result was never going to match the weight of expectation.
And so to Renegade, the culmination of a brainstorming session at Westwood that produced the predictable idea of a First Person shooter set in the Command and Conquer universe. It's disappointing really, as obviously much thought and effort has gone into producing Renegade. And let's be honest, the principle idea is a cracking one with the prospect of knocking out buildings and dodging enemy tanks likely to give any gamer gleeful thoughts of Nodular destruction. The first impression, however, is an in-house engine that lacks any imagination or detail as well as weight to the weapons and vehicles. External scenes are derivative and plain; inside the buildings is just as bad except gloomier. A user interface that borders on the insane (yes I KNOW it's a Nod Buggy! I KNOW it's a helicopter!), "life" bars for enemies and - bizarrely - vehicles (which completely deflates any lingering realism) and in-game cut scenes that reveal the most sexist and cringeworthy wise-cracking game character since Duke Nukem - Serious Sam doesn't count, that was tongue in cheek - all combine to make Renegade not a lot of fun.

Apart from the above, the levels lack tension. There is always a plentiful supply of armour and health some of which - unholy of unholies - respawns! Respawning armour! My god! What next? Bad guys that commit suicide when they see how tough you look? It's bad enough that each soldier you eliminates leaves behind a gun or armour. The average gamer shouldn't have to play on the hardest level to get any sort of challenge.

There is a complete lack of puzzles of any type and stealth is only given as a choice, when to be honest blasting away is a much easier way of getting results. We all like to have a bit of flexibility in our gaming, but each method should have its own rewards otherwise it's totally pointless.

Without the C&C license this would have been a poor game. With the license it's still terrible and also an extreme disappointment.

The Hall of Shame now stands as follows:-

1:Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi (Playstation)
2:Highlander (ZX Spectrum)
3:Ground Zero Texas (Sega Mega-cd)
4:Rise of the Robots (Sega Megadrive)
5:Command and Conquer Renegade (PC)

JD's Videogame Hall of Shame Part 4: Rise of the Robots

Rise of the Robots was released by Acclaim back in 1994 after a thorough and tiresomely ubiqitous advertising campaign. Whether this discouraged me from buying it at the time or I had had my fill of one on one beat 'em ups thanks to Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat, I don't know, but I suspect it was a combination of both. With the benefit of hindsight, it was a decision that not only saved me forty quid, but also preserved a segment of my sanity that surely would have been eroded away by paying that sort of money to play this tosh.

Before we get onto the game's various flaws, let's examine the booklet. Akin to Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi (see Hall of Shame entry no.1), ROTR bolts on a ludicrous "story" that's supposed to give you a reason for going round banging other robots about. All the droids have backgrounds as well and special moves - although this will not be of great interest to you.

For you see, in their infinite wisdom, the developers Mirage decided that you can only play the main character, a cyborg imaginitively named, um, cyborg. Only in 2-player practice mode, can you use a different character, and still the other person has to play the blue buffoon.

Of course this would have not been a huge issue had the game been any good, but unfortunately Rise of the Robots is a turd of such immense proportions that it really should have it's own flag.

Playing against various vague and boring futuristic locations, your blue cyborg prances around the screen, daintily trying to land ineffective blows on the other ridiculous robots. The moves seem dreadfully limited and this lack of variation (or indeed the need for any tactics, as the enemies often walk happily into your attacks) cripples the game right from the start. When you do manage to land a blow (and this is entirely random) you never get the impression you're doing any real damage, even if the enemies power bar shows you've just landed a vicious hit.
The collision detection is a touch wonky as well - surely a major crime for any fighting game - and the much touted graphics, whilst servicible, are nowhere near matching the hyberbole that preceded it's release.

The best thing about the game is the music which is by Brian May. Yes, the game is that bad.

The hall of Shame now stands as follows:-

1:Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi (Playstation)
2:Highlander (ZX Spectrum)
3:Ground Zero Texas (Sega Mega-cd)
4:Rise of the Robots (Sega Megadrive)

JD's Videogame Hall of Shame Part 3: Ground Zero Texas

A Sega Megadrive add-on (or rather an add-under!), the Mega-cd was a frequently maligned machine. Riding on the wave of wondrous CD enhanced promises, Sega continued in the early 90's it's misjudged policy of trying to extend the Megadrive's life - rather than developing a totally new console - so resulting in this machine and the similarly ill-fated 32x.

But to say there were no good games for the Mega-cd would be a gross misjudgement. Admittedly, there were many clangers with some even worse than Ground Zero Texas, yet there were also many excellent releases including the futuristic adventure Snatcher, the superior versions of Megadrive carts The Terminator and Flashback and Cryo's excellent Dune.

The shadow of the dreaded Full Motion Video (FMV) was never far away though and the games based around this fledgling technology were generally poor and criminally overrated at the time. One example is the notorious Night Trap (which seems stunningly mundane and almost comical in these times of Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt) and another is this sci-fi alien invasion adventure from Digital Pictures which boasted a ridiculous 110 minutes of FMV!

Set in a small town (why is it always small American towns that get all this weird stuff happen to them?), but likely shot on the cheap in Mexico or somewhere similar, I recall Ground Zero Texas getting some amazing reviews at the time considering the terminally limited nature of the gameplay. I also remember it coming in a very nice double sized box but costing me forty-five pounds from Electronics Boutique - there was no waiting for it to appear on the pre-owned shelf in those days!

It's perhaps easy to see how the reviewers were impressed early on: the game has a nice intro, some great music and the thrill of gunning down aliens can be engaging for a short time; but the FMV itself is horribly grainy and once you realise there really isn't any more to the game then flicking between scenes and waiting for an alien to pop up, GZT quickly loses it's thrill. Even worse is the occasional "action" scene where you take pot shots at aliens in a barn (or some other trite location) which is nothing more than a glorified shooting gallery only, without a light gun.


Perhaps Sega assumed gamers would be too wowed by the new technology to notice the lack of an actual game beneath titles such as Ground Zero Texas, but it quickly became clear to me at the time that it was nothing more than a cheap B-movie with a simple shooting game bolted on and a shocking waste of money.

Forty-five quid....(shudders)

JD's Videogame Hall of Shame Part 1: Star Wars Masters of Teras Kasi

I love Star Wars games. Ever since I sat in that amazing arcade cabinet feeding twenty-pence pieces into it's coin slot and pretending I was Luke Skywalker attacking the Deathstar and not some schoolkid from Essex, I have played practically every different interpetation of George Lucas' space adventure, and if not greatly enjoyed them, then at least wasted away a not inconsiderable amount of time on each incarnation.

Early efforts such as the soundless Spectrum arcade conversion and the Mega-CD FMV-fest Rebel Assault had their good points but were limited by the hardware of the era and an obsession with new technology respectively. Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi had no such excuse: the playstation was the current machine of choice, with graphics and sound a ZX Spectrum could only dream of and an incredible roster of games taking advantage of it's huge user base. Any Star Wars game was always going to be hugely anticipated and massively overhyped.

And let's be honest, who's appetite wasn't whetted by the opportunity to engage in one on one light sabre battles or take control of the coolest Star Wars character, bounty hunter Boba Fett?

That's my main initial issue with this game. Back in 1998, the idea was a sound one, combining the world famous IP of Star Wars with the Playstation's genre of choice, the one-one-one beat 'em up. Maybe upon reflection this wasn't such genius, after all the characters of Star Wars offer such variety, it was always going to be difficult to shoe-horn them into a simple fighter. But try they did, and many (including surely George Lucas himself) must have wished they hadn't bothered.

First impressions are ok: the iconic "A long time ago" and plot crawl are present and correct as is the slow pan down to an unknown planet and John Williams' brilliant music. The plot itself (if you can call it that) sees the Emperor in a bad mood following the Rebel Alliance's destruction of his apocalyptic Death Star. Desperate for swift yet subtle retribution, he hires the feared assassin Arden Lyn to take out the key members of the Rebel alliance using the forgotten art of combat called - yes, you guessed it - Teras Kasi. Which, um, everyone seems to be an expert in.

The rebels, on getting wind of this, decide to face the challenge head on, so giving rise to a series of bouts between differing members of each faction. In the arcade mode your task is to beat an increasingly trickier opponent from either the Empire (or other neutrally evil characters such as a Gamorrean guard and Boba Fett) or the Rebel Alliance. There are a few other options allowing you to play against a friend, practice your moves on a static opponent, team play or survival mode.

So where does SW:MOTK start to go wrong? Well, from the time the fights begin really. All the standard beat 'em up trappings are present such as energy bar and timer and the battles take place at various different Star Wars locations such as Hoth, Cloud City and Coruscant. At the bottom of the screen is a power bar, and depending on how many yellow lights you have illuminated on it (achieved by landing blows) various special abilities which change from character to character can be used. Now the big problem here is that these "special" abilities can now by definition only be used very occasionally so Luke generally doesn't use his Lightsabre, Han keeps his pistol firmly holstered and Boba Fett is reluctant to prime his thermal detonators. So if you were hoping for sweeping and majestic lightsabre duels between Luke and his old man, you're going to be sorely disappointed. The rest of the game is just frighteningly average-bordering-on-disastrous. Opponents are either ludicrously difficult to beat or unbelievably stupid with supposed uber-assassin Arden Lyn particularly adept at hurling herself to her doom and automatically awarding you a round. The combination moves required for the special weapons are complicated and not worth the effort, either resulting in a missed shot, or worse giving your opponent the opportunity to launch a decisive attack in your general direction.

The background is just windowdressing with an infrequent spaceship or droid wandering past the only evidence of any life and the moves - such a vital part of any fighting game - just dull, unimaginative and ill-keeping with the characters involved (Darth Vader doing a daft flying kick just doesn't look right). This coupled with the cumbersome response to button presses and your character's slow turning speed make the game extremely onerous to play. The graphics I begrudgingly admit were ok for the time yet whilst the game gives the impression in screenshots of being 3D it's still really only in two dimensions. The incongrous nature of the scenes some characters find themselves fighting in grates hugely as well, a good example being the screenshot above of Boba Fett and the Gamorrean guard slugging it on Hoth.

Maybe there is an iota of pleasure to be derived from this game should you by some miracle persuade a friend to play it with you; the team play option at least sounds interesting.

But then so did a Star Wars themed fighting game.