Oldies & Goldies – Games on the Let’s Play List

I couple of weeks ago I mentioned I was getting ready to once again record/broadcast game playthroughs, with a chosen focus on older games. At the time I mentioned a couple of titles, and since then I’ve acquired other titles to tackle, both through recordings and live playthroughs on twitch. Let me tell you a bit about them

Fair point of note, I’m considering oldie anything at least a decade old.

Nightmare Creatures: Now this is one of the games I first mentioned, a title close to my heart but that I can only say I finished recently, as part of the recording process. Nightmare Creatures is an OLD game, from the time when PC Magazines still sent out CDs with shareware versions of games. I remember playing the shareware version of Nightmare Creatures to the point of exhaustion, a single level filled with tons of monsters and things to hack. This is the first title I’ll put up on YouTube and Twtich VOD Uploads. I decided to record it because of how old it is, as it’s not exactly stable on modern PCs. I didn’t suffer any major crashes, but I had to a lot of busy work to get it running properly. Hell, when I first launched it the game had pretty much unlimited framerate. It was so fast it was unplayable.

Nightmare Creatures follows two agents of a secret society pursuing scientist turned occult madman Adam Crowley, fighting the hordes of monsters created by his dark experiments all the way to Westminster for a final confrontation on the roof of the burning Abbey.

Nocturne: I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: Nocturne is the predecessor to Bloodrayne, a game series I hold very dear in my heart. Nocturne follows mysterious special agent The Stranger as he investigates a series of supernatural cases, split into several chapters. One of these chapters features a female half-vampire, Rayne’s predecessor. In fact, if only they didn’t have those licensing issues, we would’ve seen Nocturne 2 instead of BloodRayne, but I’m kinda happy it happened the way it did, as Rayne is a much more striking character, on all fronts.

Nocturne is coming to live broadcasts. Though I had issues installing the game, it’s fairly stable and run smoothly.

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy: I think everyone knows this game or has at least heard of it, the definitive psychic operative video game, one that makes most Jedi games look clunky in comparison. Psi-Ops has you infiltrate a compound controlled by a group of rogue psychic agents, who decided to go into business for themselves. On the outset your powers are disabled and you have to make do with limited skills, using a bit of stealth and firepower, but it’s not long before you recover your skills and start kicking ass. This is a game that features a Telekinetic duel involving cargo containers. It’s that over the top and thoroughly enjoyable. I played it years and years ago and I still have fond memories of it. The question is, how will I see it now? Will the tinged nostalgia lenses be true or will I lose my temper with the game?

I’m still not sure what I’ll do with Psi-Ops, it’s a good game for either recording or broadcasting. I’ll have to test it and determine how stable it is!

Second Sight: I first played this game on the Gamecube and loved it, and I mean LOVED it, as it takes a more psychological approach to psychic powers, as well as creating a nice mystery with diverging timelines, where the protagonist’s powers shunt him to the past and then the present, creating shifts in the timeline that alter minute details and removing roadblocks from his quest. It’s an incredibly interesting game.

Much like Psi-Ops, I’m not sure of its stability, so I’ll have to update on how things will go once I know if it’s a mess or stable enough to play live.

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain: Can you believe this game is missing from all online stores and the only digital option is abandonware lacking music and cutscenes? It’s baffling considering this is the first title in the Legacy of Kain series, a forgotten gem. It’s an isometric action RPG where you play as Kain as he first becomes a vampire and goes on the quest to restore the pillars of Nosgoth. This is the first game in the series and it already had the rich background for the world and the timeline manipulations that tend to make the plot of this series a bit strange to explain to strangers. Still, it’s a game I’ve played several times in my life and I feel deserves to be brought back for new audiences. Hell, a remake/remaster would do this game so much good, to bring it back to modern audiences.

Blood Omen is definitely going on recording, as I have to do a lot of work to keep it running well, including slowing down my processor speed. Still don’t know how that’ll play with the recording it self, but I’m pretty sure broadcast is going to be very difficult.

The Last Story: A Wii game by Final Fantasy’s creator Sagakuchi Hironobu and featuring one of the best political plotlines I’ve seen in video games. This is one of the three titles Operation Rainfall campaigned to have released in the west and it’s my least favourite of the trio, but it’s still a damn solid game and its lack of ports to Switch or even Wii U makes it something of a forgotten gem of the Wii, a title that came to life as the console died and never had the audience it deserved.

I’m definitely broadcasting this game!

Pandora’s Tower: Game two in the Operation Rainfall theory, Pandora’s Tower is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, an action RPGs that combines a bit of Casltevania with Monster Hunter of all things, as you explore several towers with unique designs and elemental affinities, looking for monster flesh to feed to the protagonist’s girlfriend, as it’s the only way to stave off the curse that plagues her. The only cure, in fact, is the flesh from the core of the Tower Masters, massive creatures you need to adapt your strategies for, making great use of your main weapon, a chain you can use to strangle or grind enemies down.

But despite its description, it’s not a gruesome game and even features something of a dating sim mechanic, where you give the character’s girlfriend gifts and talk to her to keep her happy and motivated, as devouring the monster flesh is incredibly disturbing to her.

Another one I’m definitely broadcasting.

Xenoblade Chronicles: The last of the Operation Rainfall trio and my absolute favourite of the bunch. It’s also the best known among them with a port to the New Nintendo 3DS and two sequels, the latest one releasing on the Nintendo Switch. Still, the 3DS version is something of a limited version, not as in “limited edition” or anything like that but in the fact that some content, like Japanese audio, got removed from it, which is a damn shame as I absolutely adore the Japanese voice acting. So gonna do this one as well! I’ve missed the world of Xenoblade Chronicles and wielding the Monado.

You guessed it, broadcasting.

Zack & Wiki: The Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure: This game is a strange one, a point & click adventure game developed by Capcom exclusively for the Nintendo Wii. Every stage is a self-contained challenge scenario of micro-puzzles, with timers and scores. The plot is silly, sometimes dumb, but the gameplay is solid and I have really fond memories of it. So now it’s time to bring this game back!

I’m gonna record this one, just because it’s a point & click adventure game and I’ll probably take my sweet time with it.

Metroid Prime Trilogy: Do I need to say anything about this one? It’s Metroid Prime, all three games released so far, and the only ones in the series up until we saw that teaser trailer last year. Amazing games, great content, phenomenal stories and some definitive Samus ass-kickery.

Broadcast is the way to go for this gem!

Secret Files & Lost Horizon Series: A fair chunk of games I’ve been playing recently. They’re at least ten years old, the voice acting goes from acceptable to downright terrible, the plots have lots of stupid in them and in many ways they relics of a bygone era, so they’re kinda perfect for what I want to do. In total there are 6 games, and I’ll be recording each of them!

Aside from Nightmare Creatures, the rest of the games are up to debate on which one I should do first, for recording or broadcast, so let me know!