The picture above is from another great game. Simon the Sorcerer. The first two games are great and Simon the Sorcerer 2 was the first point-and-click adventure I played. It’s not my favorite series in the genre but I still think you should check it out if you want two good adventure games. I’m not too fond of the later games in the series, mostly because of the 3D-graphics. Point-and-click-games should be in 2D, if you ask me at least. Another great series that you probably heard of is Monkey Island. And it’s the same thing there. The 3D games are inferior to the 2D games. Although the fifth game of the series, Tales of Monkey Island were pretty good. Mostly because the controls were a lot better than part four; Escape from Monkey Island. Just to add some more recommendations, try the first three games, the special editions of the first two are also great, especially the second game. Other good SCUMM-games from LucasArts are Sam n’ Max: Hit the Road, Day of the Tentacle, The Dig and LOOM.

But not all 3D games are bad. As I mentioned earlier, Tales of Monkey Island is worth playing, and so is Escape from Monkey Island if you can stand the awkward controls. But the best of those games might be Grim Fandango, which is also made by LucasArts. It’s a lot different in theme and story, and the controls are as awkward as they are in EMI, but it’s still worth a shot if you want a great Adventure Game.

I tend to prefer the SCUMM-games from LucasArts over the SCI-games from Sierra. The Sierra games (like King’s Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry) got some great games, but the thing I don’t like is that you can die if you make a small misstake. Sure it makes the games more challenging, but it can also be a bit tedious to replay large portions of the game just because you forgot to save. Good game to try are Space Quest 4 & 5 and King’s Quest 6. I haven’t played all of them but those are the ones I enjoyed the most of the ones I’ve played.

A newer game that I still haven’t beat, too many games to play and too little time, is Machinarium. The graphics are great and the puzzles are challenging enough. It shouldn’t be that expensive if you manage to find it, I got it from one of the Indie game bundles from humblebundle.com a while ago. I might do some more recommendations later as there are way more good adventure games and I think my next post about this might be about two games inspired by a world created by one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett.

The other game that takes up a lot of time is League of Legends, I’m not playing it as much as I used to thanks to RO, but I still try to play a game or two each day. It got a pretty steep learning curve, and I’ve got a long way to the top. But it’s fun and I’ve improved  a lot according to myself. Still make some newbie-mistakes from time to time though.

Something that most gaming site’s did in the end of 2011 was to announce their favorite games of the year. Here on Rawr Gaming I’ll do a shorter version of it. The three games released last year that I’ve enjoyed the most is Portal 2, The Binding of Isaac and Bastion. I’ll probably write a bit of all of those quite soon, but for those of you who haven’t tried them yet to it. Portal was, if I’m not wrong, a short game/tech demo that was included in the Orange Box together with a bunch of Half Life 2-games and Team Fortress 2. I bought it because of Team Fortress 2, but the game that really amazed me was Portal.

I pre-ordered Portal 2, and even though I beat it quite quickly, I really enjoyed it. Especially the co-op mode. I love multiplayer games, especially when you get to cooperate with someone. And while playing with different people I discovered that there is some different strategies that can be applied. Voice communication makes everything a lot easier though and is recommended.

Most of you have probably heard of Team Meat, the guys who made Super Meat Boy, another great game. Their latest game is called The Binding of Isaac and is a rogue-like with a story inspired by some part of the bible, there should a be a short article about it by me at ctrlaltelite.se, where I got that info included. The graphics feels like a mash-up of the  The Legend of Zelda-dungeons and Super Meat Boy. The gameplay is also zelda-inspired, combined with Super Smash TV. The thing that gives the game a lot of replay value is that almost everything is randomly generated and there’s loads of powerups to get and a couple of bosses which is also random. And of course there’s a couple of playable characters with different strengths and weaknesses.  It’s a great game, try it out and check back in a while to read a more detailed post about it.

The third game I’ll mention is Bastion. Big thanks to Blair who gave me the best christmas gift of the year. Don’t forget to check out his site www.nerdtome.com for gaming and movies-related articles, reviews and stuff. Bastion is actually a pretty simple hack’n'slash-kinda game where just run around and kill stuff. But the story, the graphics and especially the music got me hooked at once. Sure, it’s no Torchlight, but if you haven’ tried it, do it. The dynamic narration that actually follows what you do is pretty interesting and as I just said, the soundtrack is wonderful! This game is actually gave me an idea what I should write about.

Remember the Best of Video Game Music-series me and a couple of friends did? As you probably understood I really enjoy game soundtracks and video game-inspired music. So I’m going to write about that. Soundtracks to games and remixes of game music that I think are worth mentioning. If you got suggestions feel free to write a comment or mail me at varg [at] rawr [dot] se. I’ll try to get the soundtrack if I don’t have it already and if I  like it or think it’ got something interesting. You might see it here on Rawr.se.

If you got any other suggestions please tell me. I want to update more than I’ve done but I’m not sure I’ll be able to just yet.

Don’t forget to check out www.speeddemosarchive.com for their Charity Marathon “Awesome Games Done Quick 2012″. I’ve seen some pretty awesome speedruns livestreamed already. If you missed Metroid Zero Mission and Ocarina of Time I feel sorry for you. They were AWESOME! And that’s all for this long wall of text, which probably is one of the longer I’ve written for Rawr.se.

The game might also be one of the easiest games in the series to beat, and even to get 100%. Sure, I died a couple of times, but I did manage to find all the Pieces of Heart without too much trouble. Although, there was one which took a while to get. And it’s usually one of the last to grab, so I guess it’s supposed to be well-hidden. And as people told me on Facebook when I mentioned something about the game, the third boss, Moldorm, is pure evil. It’s the caterpillar/snake-hybrid that likes to push you down the holes around the platform where you fight it. If you’ve played the game you should know which one it is, and all the frustration included in beating it. It’s not hard, just very, VERY, annoying.

The story, the graphics, the music, everything’s just as I want it. Sure it isn’t a 3D adventure like Ocarina of Time or Windwaker, but as you all probably know, I’m not a big fan of high-definition graphics, but I do love the graphics from the 8-bit and 16-bit era. I’m also going to include one of my favorite songs from the game. It’s one of the first songs you hear in the game; the Hyrule castle theme.

Turtles in Time! The fourth game in the series. The soundtrack is just as wonderful as the rest of the game, although I haven’t beat it yet, because never owned it. I will soon though, and one of the stages I’m looking forward to the most is the one where you’re on a train, fighting from carriage to carriage. The reason isn’t the level itself, it’s actually the music from it that I really love. The sampled voices might be  horrible, but they’re better than The Adventures of Bayou Billy and Altered Beast at least. The bass, the drums (yes, there’s even a small drum solo-part in it), everything about it is just great! I wonder if I’ll ever get to hear music like this in a video game again.

There might be a new layout for rawr.se quite soon, although I’m not sure when it’ll be ready. I’ve also decided to add Disqus so it’ll be easier to login when you want to add a comment.

The theme for next week will be: Transportation

And now it’s official, I’m one of them and I’ve been writing a couple of shorter news stories, my first review is due next week and I’m planning a longer article or two, the first might be in several parts… Haven’t done all the planning yet, but if you know Swedish, please check out my work over there.

Rawr.se will be back, I just have to get used to writing as much stuff as I do right now, and I’ve managed to damage a foot pretty bad a while ago. So, what will happen to Rawr.se? Do you remember that I’ve mentioned that I’m also a musician and that I really love video game music? Well I was talking to one of my close friends earlier and we decided to challenge ourselves. We’ll make a big playlist with great songs from video games, both classics and modern games.

How will we do it? Each day of the week, except Sundays, we’ll choose a song that fits a theme we already decided on. A game may only be on the list once a week. We’re still working on the details, but we’ll begin next week. And the theme is…. Boss Battles! So be sure to visit Rawr.se for my first entry this Monday!  Uv will post one on Tuesday and there might a third person joining us, if not I’ll be back with my second entry on Wednesday.

Lördagen den 28 Maj 2011, Retrospelsmässa i Gamlestan, Göteborg.

Det första som slog mig när jag kom in i lokalen var att det spelades TV-spelsmusik live. Kanske inte allt för ovanligt, men det jag reagerade på var instrumenten som användes. Trumpet, dragspel och kontrabas. Detta är dock ingen nackdel då det ger musiken ett intressant ljud, i vanliga fall är det ju nästan bara piano eller en bunt hårdrockare som framför sådant.

Den nästan för låga summan för entrén betalades och nästa rum som skådas är fullt av tv-apparater och massor med härliga gamla konsoller, vissa som jag hittills, bara har hört talats om.  Det är dock inte det här rummet jag fastnade i, förutom när jag fick bekräftat att jag saknar all form av skicklighet i Sonic 2 till Sega Mega Drive senare under dagen.

Försäljning, där har vi det jag föll för, av vad jag kunde se så var det väl inte allt för mycket extremt fina objekt för storsamlarna, även om det fanns en hel del vettiga saker. Fanns ändå några klassiker som var kompletta med låda och allt, samt lite udda saker jag inte hade väntat mig att se där. Men jag stirrade mig nästan blind på alla oförglömliga NES-klassiker som tyvärr inte står i min hylla än. Jag har ganska nyligen bestämt mig för att börja samla på just NES och MegaDrive-spel och till att börja med så lär det bli några att ha för att spela på. Detta resulterade The Adventure of Link som jag har velat ha sen någon gång på nittiotalet, men det har aldrig blivit av att jag köpt det.

Utöver försäljning så fanns det lite utställningar som både jag och vänner blev lite smått avundsjuka på. Amiga-klassiker som Zool och Super Frog. En komplett samling av NES-spel utgivna i Skandinavien och en hel del annat.

När det gäller tävlingarna som hölls så missade jag tyvärr en hel del av dem då jag var tvungen att åka från mässan tidigare, och det fanns hela tiden annat som fångade mitt intresse. Däremot så var Pixelninjas Samus-cosplay oerhört sevärd. Jag har ändå varit på en hel del animekonvent men hennes dräkt var antagligen en av de mest välgjorda jag sett i Sverige.

Det var fem väl spenderade timmar och höjdpunkten för min del var nog ändå när den tidigare nämnda trion musiker spelade låten från Gun.Smoke Stage 1.

Ser fram emot något liknande och förhoppningsvis ännu bättre Retrospelsmässa nästa år!

Kan även rekommendera sidorna www.nesdb.se och www.segalovers.se som jag hittade i samband med den väldigt trevliga mässan.

The Monkey Island-series wasn’t the first adventure games that I played, but they sure are the ones that I liked the most.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to give the fifth game in the series, Tales of Monkey Island a new chance. At first i wasn’t too fond of it because I thought the controls were even more horrible than they were in the fourth game, Escape from Monkey Island. But later I found out that you can play it with the same, but improved, controls from EMI. This actually makes the game playable, and it was worth it because the story is just wonderful. Especially in the last two episodes. Yes, that’s right. Episodes.

As most of Telltale Games’ erm… games.. It’s divided into five episodes, and of course, you have to pay for each of them. I’m not too sure what i think about that and I’ve only played two seasons of the new Sam n’ Max-series before TMI. The episodes feels a bit short, but the puzzles are pretty hard so I guess that makes up for it. And the full game is just as good as the rest of them, even though it might be impossible to make a game that’s as good as Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge or CMI.

If you’ve played any of the games you might think there’s some similarities between them and the well known movie series Pirates of the Caribbean. And according to wikipedia, yes I do read a lot of stuff on that page, the guy who wrote the story for those, was supposed to write the story for a Monkey Island movie, but after it was cancelled he wrote the PotC-story instead. And by the way, I also love those movies.

And even though I know that I’m the most interesting human being, ever. Some other people may not understand that, yet. So who wants to read about me?

The next step was to relaunch it a couple of times, in Swedish. And the last time I actually managed to write a few articles, about video games and board games. Two of the things I love the most. And those articles will probably appear here pretty soon.

The plan at the moment is that most of the articles will be about retro games, there are other sites that do the modern stuff and probably even more who writes about retro games, but that won’t stop me! And if I feel a modern game is worth mentioning, I will do it.

There won’t be, at least not now, any standard reviews with a long article and then some kind of score in the end. And a post may contain more than one game, because I like to compare the games in a series. And there might even be more than one article about a single game!

So what games are supposed to be retro or old-school, and which are modern? I think I’ll draw the line between the fifth and the sixth generations of video games. Except for Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo GameBoy Advance, as those systems feels a bit more old-school than the rest in that generation.

Hopefully the games I write about might give you some suggestions of some great games from the past that you might have missed. If you got any questions, feel free to ask, I might even do a FAQ-page if it looks like it’ll be needed.