Blog #3 Sega Genesis Games and Doom

Welcome back to my blog I want to thank all my anonymous viewers for sticking with me as I rant and talk about all this games which are so dear to our hearts and give you my personal opinion about them. I don't consider myself a professional blogger so I am greatly surprise that I even have any view on my blogs at all. But thank you anyways for reading this. So without further ado lets get on with this blog post.


The First game that I chose to review for this assignment was The Adventures of Mr. Needlemouse.
The story of a blue hedgehog who runs fast and wears red MJ shoes.

Oh wait wrong game I meant to say that I chose to go back to my childhood and play Sonic the hedgehog 3. It still amazes me that this was what Sega had plan for our beloved blue hero to look like. I specifically love how innovated the name sounds. Sarcasm aside this game is very dear to my child hood. It was the first Sonic game I  played and I played the shit out of it. It also use to frustrate me to no end. I fucking hated how you would be running along through the levels kicking ass and suddenly a stupid RhinoBot would come charging through  and take away your precious rings which had taken you ages to acquired.

It was one of those things that you had to deal with and its what brings me to what I am going to talk about. Despite the many hours I invested in this game and after getting a chance to play this game again but on the computer a light bulb went off in my head. The biggest head ache I think for the sonic games when you are playing them is that the game punishes you for going fast. which is weird since that is the entire mechanics essentially of the game. You are suppose to go fast and collect rings at a record time while evading the enemies and defeating Doctor Eggman Robotnik. While running in the game is fun I feel that the game would be much better if another mechanic was added to the game instead of just having Sonic run fast through the levels. I feel that as a player you are so focus on collecting those rings and running fast to avoid getting killed by enemies that you can't stop and take a look at what is going on in the background. 

Now as to what that other mechanic should be I think maybe a new health system or somethings because I think is pretty stupid to have the rings be the representation of the health system for the character. In the game if you get hit by any enemy you lose rings and if you get stuck while you are underwater or hit an invisible enemy or wall you loose the momentum to run up a loop so you have to go back to try an attempt to build up your momentum again. This makes for boring and slow game play. I feel like the collection of rings should be less involve with health and more involve with the points aspect of the game. So in conclusion I feel that Sega should have spend a little more time towards analyzing the mechanics of the game and seeing if they work or not. But I guess they thought money matter most in this case after all Sonic is the most recognizable character in video games.But in my opinion this is still by far one of the best Sonic games out there the recent ones pale in comparison. 



The next game in the lineup that I will review is Mortal Kombat.

The reason Why I chose this one over the Mortal Kombat 2 game  is because it was easier to play. When Mortal Kombat 2 came out it was around when the fighting games were very popular in the arcades and I think the developers wanted to design a game that was hard enough to challenge players and get people off the arcade machine so other players could have a chance to play the game and not hog it. Never the less without the success of the first Mortal Kombat none of the rest would have fallowed . So I chose it out of pure nostalgia. Wow I can see a pattern developing here. Anyways what can I say about Mortal Kombat that has not been said before. Its a great game I had lots of fun playing it and manage to get to the second to last round pretty quickly. I had forgotten some moves but while playing it again my memory started to come back to me. I specially enjoy the fatality aspect of the game. Despite the controversy this game brought on due to it I think its a necessity in any fighting game. Fighting games are suppose to be bloody. It would be extremely weird to play a fighting game without blood. Which is why when they tried to force Midway to release a version without blood gamer's everywhere riot. It also gave away to the creation of the ESRB game rating system in 1994.

But despite its popularity and influence this game is not without flaws. While playing the game things that jump out to me big time was the lack of characters and story development. I believe that adding more characters to the game early on would have made for a more fun and interactive game play. I know that this was eventually fixed later on with the later games that came out but just imagine what an impact it would have had if this had happen in the first game. 



The next game in the line up is The Lion King a platform video game base on the popular Disney animated film. If you don't know who the lion king is or you have never watch the movie or played this game than I pity you. This game was one of my favorites to play as a child. My cousin and I would play it for hours and hours as well as watch the movie. It drove my mother insane. The Lion King was one of my favorite movies as a child and when I got to play this game I was ecstatic with joy. I loved the music and the animation every time I would play it I would be transported back to the movie. I loved how you played as Simba and as you advance into the levels you would witness Simba growing up as well.

I must confess that it's hard for me to try and breakdown this game and find a flaw in it. Call me bias but this is a beloved childhood game. It was also the one game I don't think I ever was able to beat but Never the less for the sake of this assignment I did my best to find a flaw and I believe I managed to do just that. After playing and investing 2 hours in the game I started to run into some flaws. This game despite how awesome and epic it was to play when I was a kid started to get pretty frustrating as I advance in the levels. As a platform it suffer from similar design flaws and mechanical errors as other platforms of that time. Sometimes while I would jump to a platform the rock platform would disappeared and Simba would fall conveniently onto a porcupine and lose a life. 

Also when you get to the hyenas part and you have to battle them that was a pain in the butt. I found that by attacking them from afar I was able to beat them other wise they would overwhelm Simba pretty quickly. So in short I think what this game lacks was a better jumping mechanic or controls and maybe give a better attack to Simba when he is a cub. Because until Simba is older you can't do shit to the enemies in the game. The only way to defend yourself is by jumping on them and as I stated before that mechanic in the game is flawed. I know Simba is lion cub but he has fucking claws for crying out loud. Let him use it. Also although Simba has this roar ability which is pretty cute is useless in the face of enemies. So yeah give Simba as a cub better abilities to fight the enemies or remove some of the enemies. Also fuck those blue beetles Simba as a cub could definitely defend himself against this blue fuckers.

Finally the last game I will talk about is Doom.
I confessed I played this game only twice when I was a child so I never really gave it much thought. I know is credited for basically giving birth to the first person shooter games genre that fallowed. 
I played the game in class and almost manage to beat it. I had lots of fun playing it and I love the range of weapons and armor power ups in the game. I also like how in some places on the game the lights would flicker off and you had to battle and shoot demons in the dark. I had some trouble with the invisible demon that would linger in those places but I quickly realize that if I shot the barrels I could instantly kill 6 or 7 of those buggers all at once. This game was really fun to play and I would definitely love to play it again. But one thing I found this game lacks was a map display. As you advance in the game you start to notice that the layout of the facility you are trapped in becomes harder and harder to navigate. Everything looks the same and you can get lost pretty easily. I overheard some classmates of mine in class talk about this factor in the game. One of my classmates said it got to a point where he didn't know were he had to go. So yes as obvious of  a flaw this is I think is the only one that I can safely point out that this game needs. 


Despite the great selection of guns I would have like to have the option to customise them or add the ability to make traps and lay them out in parts of the game to ambush the enemies. I know Doom run into some trouble with the music in the game. Some artist run into lawsuits for some of he materials. So the last thing I would have done is to fix that problem. Its fine to draw inspiration but I think when it comes to making a game always try to make the music be original. You don't want people playing your game to listen to a song in the game and think "oh wait where have I heard that tune before? ". I like the music in the game but I think I would have enjoyed it better if the music was originally composed. 

Otherwise pretty solid game in my opinion. I regret not having given it much more attention before when I was a kid. Favourite weapon of choice in the game was the shot gun. I felt tremendous satisfaction in killing those demons with it. 
Anyways  this is all I have to say about my adventures with playing this Sega Genesis titles and Doom. 
Thanks for reading and until next time.

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