I miss old SSI games and all the beauty and wonder they brought me as a child. Perhaps it’s more of the feeling of playing old MS-DOS games and that no worries feeling of playing games all summer long when your parents are out working; no cares in the world but that of the evil dragons and goblins of an RPG world. Secret of the Silver Blades arrived in May of 1990, developed and published by Strategic Simulations Inc (SSI), a company we covered in our gaming history back in TD Gaming Podcast Episode 9.
Secret of the Silver Blades is actually the third in a four-part game series which was eventually packaged in the Gold Box editing of the SSI games. It was a continuation of the game Curse of the Azure Bonds and the first in the series: Pool of Radiance. The cool part of the series was the leveling system where each would let you level to a certain limit just like most modules in D&D games, this game let you get to level seven which means a Mage could use the cool Delayed Blast Fireball spell which was one of my favorite magic spells in D&D (yeah, I’m a dork.)
The graphics were a whopping 16-colors, with slight graphical improvements over the other two prior games. This game didn’t have an overworld map like the others, going full first person for the length of the game. Another great enhancement was the ability to use the arrow keys to navigate menu’s without the need for “hot keys” like older SSI titles, given the game is very much menu-based for combat, equipment and inventory management it was very handy to have the use of those nice little arrow keys.
You create your party and start adventuring in a game engine very similar to all the games before it, so introduction to game mechanics was minimal, you could advance your characters further in level and, most importantly, import characters from previous games. The D&D world is really a character-driven game environment and you grow fond of your characters and understand the best ways to battle with them, importing is key and still, today, is a big part in well done RPG expansions (Guild Wars is a great example). Unfortunately, many games fall short of character import and it kind of blows away some of the magic of an RPG.
One of the frustrating issues with Secret of the Silver blade is the limitation on levels for the Cleric, because they can’t level up past 7 they can’t get the good ressurection spell, only allowed to use Raise Dead which lowers your characters constitution by 1 (much like the traditional D&D rules). However, given its a video game and not a paper-dice based game, the raise dead penalty is annoying, so it was easier to save often and re-load when you died to try again and avoid the penalty. I do recall their being some scrolls or something to get back your constitution penalty… but it’s been awhile I might be making that up.
Anyway, a well done series, classic RPG and helped build a foundation for games like Morrow Wind and Oblivion in my opinion.
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– regarding RealD’s Stereoscopic Gaming API: a good deal of the companies that jump into this kind of new tech stuff expect to be bought by bigger companies. And to some extent this is needed: a small arse company does not have the marketing power to become world wide leaders in that market, and thus to promote their product world wide.
@Derrick: how about an AvP game? Facehuggers do tend to jump 🙂
– regarding the XBox price cut: this kinda shows the profit margins …
As for PS3’s UI, well, at one point Joel Spolski did mention that giving users control increases the satisfaction got while using the product. You somehow prove that one right.
– question of the week (ready for next gen consoles): no. I’m strictly a PC guy. Most games that I care of are PC games. None of the console exclusives were appealing enough for me to invest in a console.
Don’t worry if the podcast goes for longer than one hour, I’ll listen.
– regarding RealD’s Stereoscopic Gaming API: a good deal of the companies that jump into this kind of new tech stuff expect to be bought by bigger companies. And to some extent this is needed: a small arse company does not have the marketing power to become world wide leaders in that market, and thus to promote their product world wide.
@Derrick: how about an AvP game? Facehuggers do tend to jump 🙂
– regarding the XBox price cut: this kinda shows the profit margins …
As for PS3’s UI, well, at one point Joel Spolski did mention that giving users control increases the satisfaction got while using the product. You somehow prove that one right.
– question of the week (ready for next gen consoles): no. I’m strictly a PC guy. Most games that I care of are PC games. None of the console exclusives were appealing enough for me to invest in a console.
Don’t worry if the podcast goes for longer than one hour, I’ll listen.
Australia Gaming NEWS : Alien Vs Predator has been banned in Australia for containing high-impact violence, according to the Classifications Board.
“We will not be releasing a sanitised or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices,” the game’s maker, Rebellion Developments, told gaming blog CVG.
Australia does not have an adult rating for games, which means that anything stronger than an MA15+ rating has to be refused classification.
Biography: http://www.news.com.au/technology/aliens-vs-predator-game-banned-will-not-be-sanitized-for-australia/story-e6frfro0-1225807850199
Australia Gaming NEWS : Alien Vs Predator has been banned in Australia for containing high-impact violence, according to the Classifications Board.
“We will not be releasing a sanitised or cut down version for territories where adults are not considered by their governments to be able to make their own entertainment choices,” the game’s maker, Rebellion Developments, told gaming blog CVG.
Australia does not have an adult rating for games, which means that anything stronger than an MA15+ rating has to be refused classification.
Biography: http://www.news.com.au/technology/aliens-vs-predator-game-banned-will-not-be-sanitized-for-australia/story-e6frfro0-1225807850199
Myself I think it stinks that we don’t have an 18+ rating for games. It should be the parent’s responsibility to monitor & restrict what content their children have access to & take advantage of the parental lock.
Myself I think it stinks that we don’t have an 18+ rating for games. It should be the parent’s responsibility to monitor & restrict what content their children have access to & take advantage of the parental lock.
IRT Ivan:
I’m buying the game for a friend of mine that lives in Australia and I’m going to ship it to him.
Problem solved.
IRT Ivan:
I’m buying the game for a friend of mine that lives in Australia and I’m going to ship it to him.
Problem solved.
IRT Herr_Alien:
lol nice way around the ban, Get us a copy while ur there =p. Btw Which country are you from mate?
Cheers
IRT Herr_Alien:
lol nice way around the ban, Get us a copy while ur there =p. Btw Which country are you from mate?
Cheers
Aliens Vs. Predator has been resubmitted for rating, because there’s now a public referendum on the R18 rating – I’m sure they’ll mention it tonight.
As for the question of the week: yes, I’m ready for the Xbox 720. They should make it a GameCube-to-Wii upgrade – two (or four) Xbox 360 processors, which would make it 100% backwards compat with the 360. Publishers could simply make a resolution bump to newly released games, making them both 360 and 720 games, and give Microsoft the perfect excuse to put a 500GB HD in the system. It would give the company three SKUs from $199 to $399.
As it is, Microsoft is promoting Natal as their “next console”. (sigh)
Aliens Vs. Predator has been resubmitted for rating, because there’s now a public referendum on the R18 rating – I’m sure they’ll mention it tonight.
As for the question of the week: yes, I’m ready for the Xbox 720. They should make it a GameCube-to-Wii upgrade – two (or four) Xbox 360 processors, which would make it 100% backwards compat with the 360. Publishers could simply make a resolution bump to newly released games, making them both 360 and 720 games, and give Microsoft the perfect excuse to put a 500GB HD in the system. It would give the company three SKUs from $199 to $399.
As it is, Microsoft is promoting Natal as their “next console”. (sigh)
Oh, and the new MULE game is “Planet M.U.L.E.”, which is free and can be found at http://www.planetmule.com
Oh, and the new MULE game is “Planet M.U.L.E.”, which is free and can be found at http://www.planetmule.com