Populous: The Beginning - PC game review

Populous: The Beginning was developed by Bullfrog and published by Electronic Arts in 1998 for PC, and Playstation the following year. One of the first 3D RTS. There was also Bullfrog's Dungeon Keeper in 1997, Battlezone earlier in 1998 which was an FPS with RTS elements. Originally known as Populous: The third coming, Populous: The Beginning is the third game in the Populous series. Criticized at the time for being too different from it's predecessors which were God games, and for being too simple of an RTS. There are some things that set Populous apart though, the Shaman and her spells, the ability to deform land. It's a great game and definitely worth checking out! 

My top 15 PC games 1989-2002

Here are my top 15 PC games from 1989-2002






Here is the list of games:
1. Hero's Quest / Quest for Glory 1: So you want to be a Hero? (1989)
2. King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! (1990)
3. Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991)
4. Warcraft II: The Tides of Darkness (1995)
5. Duke Nukem 3D (1995)
6. Half-Life (1998)
7. Need for Speed: High Stakes (1999)
8. Star Trek Voyager Elite Force (2000)
9. Deus Ex (2000)
10. Anachronox (2001)
11. Max Payne (2001)
12. Star Wars Jedi Knight II : Jedi Outcast (2002)
13. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)
14. Warcraft III: The Reign of Chaos (2002)
15. Mafia (2002)

Street Fighter II DOS PC game review / pickup

The DOS version of Street Fighter II was ported by Hi Tech Expressions in 1992. It has better graphics than the console versions, but everything else is worse especially the controls. The 6 button controls were replaced with two buttons, you could use the keyboard or joystick. Gamepads were not common yet at the time. The game was unbalanced because Dhalsim was the best character in the game, for some strange reason his moves took priority over the other fighters, and his slide covers the entire screen. Long load times, and high system requirements for the day. SFII PC requires a 386 and recommends a 486. There are only 5 songs in this version and 29 sound effects. For some reason the title theme is played in the fights, I personally liked that though. This version was an enjoyable alternative, and I can see it being more fun if you didn't own a console back then. There was a bootleg version which many people consider superior but still not as good as the other releases.
                                 

PC game collection

This is my boxed PC game collection as of 2016. I added some more games recently that aren't pictured. My big boxes are on a bookshelf and media cabinet, I put the small boxes on a smaller shelf. 

Mafia PC game review

Mafia is one of the BEST PC games ever, capisce?!

Mafia is a 3rd person shooter and open world driving game developed by Czech studio Illusion Softworks and released August 2002 on PC. Mafia was code named Gangster. It was originally going be a driving game similar to the game Driver with a multiplayer racing mode and set for release in 2000. Illusion was going to use the engine from their previous game Hidden and Dangerous, but it wasn't advanced enough so they created a new engine LS3D.

Mafia has a fantastic and memorable story, amazing graphics and sound, and great voice acting. It feels like you are playing a movie! The story and characters are really believable. The main character starts out as a young guy, he's a good person but makes some bad moral choices. The voice acting is excellent from the entire cast, a lot of the cast of the Sopranos lent their talent for Mafia.

Some players were turned off by the amount of driving and how slow some of the cars are. Your first car the Bolt Ace (Ford Model-T - There is a real car names mod) only has a top speed of 40 mph on a flat road, but down hill it is about 60 mph. The cars feel like they have a weight to them so when you go down hill your car will speed up a lot. The later cars you unlock are much faster.

 Mafia was released only 3 months after Grand Theft Auto 3 came out on PC, it had been 10 months since it's release on PS2. Comparisons were made to GTA3 but besides being an open world it shares little in common with GTA. It's a lot more realistic and more of a linear story based game. Cops will pull you over for going over 40mph, running red lights, and crashing your car. I crashed into a trash can and they pulled me over! It's not too difficult to outrun the cops even in a slow car, if you change cars the cops won't be able to find you. Mafia's engine allows for more realistic car damage than GTA3. Windows can be broken, headlights  fall off, you can shoot out tires. Cars feature real time damage deformation. On my playthrough a cop car was hit by a trolly and looked flattened! In GTA3 cars simply catch on fire and explode.

You have to learn to lock pick cars in the game. There are 51 cars in the story missions and 19 bonus cars you unlock after completing the main game. You also need to refuel your car at gas stations. The game doesn't use money, it just shows the attendant pumping gas and you paying a fine when the police pull you over.

You play as taxi driver Thomas Angelo. The game takes place in the fictional city of Lost Heaven,  a combination of San Francisco and Chicago. In addition there is also an expansive countryside to drive in ! The story spans from 1930-1938 during the Great Depression and the later part of prohibition. In 1930 Tommy isn't making a lot of money as a taxi driver, but he says a lot of people are worse off then him. On his shift one night Tommy runs into and Paulie and Sam, they are being chased by rival gangsters of the Morello gang and Tommy takes them back to the safety of the bar.





The gangsters compensate Tommy for the damages to his car, and offer more work if he's interested. he decides not to join the criminal organization, and goes back to his regular job.





The taxi missions are a really slow part of the game. You have to take a few passengers around town, they will complain if you speed or crash.

After a dropping off a few customers Tommy takes a coffee break. Members of the Morello gang tracked him down and attack him.

Tommy escapes the two men and runs to the safety of the Salieri bar. He decides to join the gang thinking it can't be that bad. I don't want to give away any more spoilers for people who haven't played the game yet.


Besides the story missions, the only side quests are given by auto mechanic Louis Bertone. Do him a favor and he will teach you how to unlock new cars.







I think it's a cool concept not being able to get all the cars right away, when you add a new car to your garage it's awesome. In addition to the vehicles you can also take the train and light rail around the city.

My garage

In the 1.0 version of Mafia, the Grand Prix race was so difficult that many people gave up and never got past this point. I was able to beat it as a kid but it was really frustrating, you couldn't make any mistakes. The patch allows you to choose a difficulty all the way down to very easy, Later versions of Mafia sold retail with the 1.2 patch.

                                       


                                            original release (top) Version 1.2 release (bottom)




                                               The jewel case of the 1.2 version-

Mafia got a small box release. 2002 was around the time big box PC games went away and the small box became standard.

The graphics in Mafia were amazing for the time.  I was very impressed with the face graphics. but hands are kind of blocky. Cars are shiny and have reflections. I originally played Mafia on the first PC I ever built, a Pentium III 800 mhz with an Nvidia GeForce 2 GTS 64 mb graphics card. My PC was two years old by the time I played Mafia, but still ran the game well. I always got 60 fps indoors and about 30 fps outside.

There are very few repeated textures and each building looks different. The only compliant about the graphics at the time was that some of the building textures up close weren't very detailed.

On my modern PC I was having problems running Mafia on Windows 10 until I used an app called WindowedBorderlessGaming, this allows the game to run full screen in a window. Now the game runs fine at 1080p (1920x1080) In my opinion it still looks great!


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I ran into a couple bugs on my play through. When you go inside a building if you're not close enough to the door you can get stuck outside in this weird limbo world and all the buildings vanished, shortly after I fell through the ground! Later in my play through a police car was chasing me and one of the police officers got out, after taking care of him the car stopped and the other officer got out, but the car was still driving by itself. Also there were a few path finding issues when NPCs try to get in your car. These bugs were nothing major and could be fixed by reloading the game. No game is perfect but I think Mafia comes close. In fact, I don't remember encountering any bugs on my original play through as a kid, but that was way back in 2002!


Mafia has three modes.The main story, free ride, and free ride extreme. In Free ride you can cruise around the city or the countryside and set the population, there's also some rival gangsters driving around you'll have to watch out for.

Free ride extreme is unlocked only after finishing the game. It's like a new game + mode.In Free ride extreme you'll go on hilarious missions to earn really cool cars, like this one Flower Power. The city is changed a bit in this mode, there's ramps. Some of the missions include chasing down an NPC who runs super fast  and driving to a location with a car that keeps running out on gas. It's a shame that Mafia 2 didn't have a free ride mode.

Mafia was removed from Steam in 2012 because the music license expired. Currently the only way to play it is to get a copy of the original CDs, but it can be found for a decent price on Ebay, and runs perfectly on a modern OS.

In conclusion I highly recommend Mafia. If you like open world games and games with a good story this is a must play.

Video Review below

Lamborghini American Challenge DOS PC Game Review

                                             

Lamborghini American Challenge is a game developed by Titus in 1993. It was ported to several systems (DOS, Atari ST, Amiga CD32, SNES, Gameboy, & Commodore 64), I'm mainly reviewing the DOS CD Version released in 1994, but I'll mention some differences in the ports. American Challenge is an enhanced version of Crazy Cars III, released in 1992. The enhancements are a jazz soundtrack and a 2 player split screen mode. In the original Crazy Cars (1987), the player could drive several high end automobiles. In Crazy Cars II, 1987 (Also called Pursuit Simulator F40) focused on the Ferrari F40, and featured branching paths and a more realistic driving model. American Challenge is an arcade racer featuring the Lamborghini Diablo.

I first played Lamborghini American Challenge at an after school program I went to in the early 90s. It was on that computer I got exposed to some great games, and this was one of them! The kids there thought if you hold up (gas) and click the mouse you could go faster. That always really bugged me, but I really enjoyed this game, it has colorful graphics and great gameplay.

You play as a racer taking part in illegal street races throughout the US. You can choose between three characters, a woman and two men. At the beginning of each race you can bet against your opponents. Sometimes they will try to see your bet and outbet you, the winner takes all!

The gold stars are races you can take part in, as you win races the other locations in red unlock.

The colorful VGA graphics were great for the time, (I think still today) and had good variety. I thought it was awesome how cops could chase you. When cops pull up to a CPU opponent they will stop, you can outrun them. There are also other motorists that you have to watch out for, if you hit them it will slow you down and damage your Lamborghini, and you'll have to spend more on repairs after the race.

Winning prize money from the tournament will allow you upgrade your Lambo. Improve your top speed and get nitros! 

 I have three complaints about this game. There is no music as you race in the DOS and Amiga versions. In the SNES version music plays, I haven't tried the other versions. As you progress you upgrade your car, but your opponents can't which makes the game kind of easy. In the DOS version you can only save once every tournament, which is every 4 races. In the SNES version there is a password system.

These are minor complaints however. Some other differences in the ports: in the Amiga version the Lamborghini is orange and the sound quality isn't as high. The SNES version has music during the races and a more colorful world map. If the SNES mouse or Superscope is attached it activates another mode where the player can shoot opponents! I think American Challenge is a fun arcade racer, there are better games but this one is worth checking out if you like DOS racing games.

Check out my video review~!

Doom turns 22!

Doom turns 22 today! This classic first person shooter was developed by ID Software and released for PCs running MS-DOS on December 10th, 1993. It was distributed by mail order and floppy disc, but the game was so popular it would get installed at Universities and students procrastinated several hours playing it. Ports followed for Mac and consoles. Doom was unique for it’s level of violence. It was once called a “murder simulator” by critics.

It had amazing multiplayer, 4 player deathmatch and co op modes.

Doom's 3D graphics engine was advanced for the time, it was the first to feature multiple floors. Earlier first person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D only had single floors. Even though the engine was rendered in 3D, this was actually just an illusion because the floors weren’t technically on top of each other, they had to be in parallel. It also featured outdoor environments.

I remember when I first played Doom, I think it was around 1994 so I would have been 9 years old. My Dad brought home a computer from work that was used to run a BBS. I remember thinking the graphics on the shotgun looked so realistic. I later got the Doom shareware from a store, I wish I got the mail order boxed version!

In 1995, it was estimated Doom was installed on more computers than Windows 95. When a Windows 95 version of Doom was released in 1996 called Doom95, Bill Gates put himself into the commercial. It was used to sell Windows 95 and push DirectX technology.

Doom had a sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth, released in 1994. Doom 3 was released in 2004. Doom 4 will be a reboot, just called Doom expected to be released Spring 2016. With Doom 4 around the corner, now is a perfect time to play the original classic! It’s on sale on steam currently for $4.99. I recommend using a source port of Doom called Doomsday. Doomsday makes the graphics better, has mouse support, and cool features not present in the original like jumping. You can also play online using the Doomsday Shell.exe. Happy birthday Doom!