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Shoot him in the junk! It's his only weak spot!

I’ve gone retro.

I’ve been having a lot of fun playing 10-year-old video games I never had a chance to play the first time around.

Thanks to Good Old Games, a site run by CD Projekt, makers of my favourite RPG of all time The Witcher, I was able to pick up Giants: Citizen Kabuto for $6. It’s a game I always thought looked interesting, but never managed to play.

Wow, did I miss out back in the day.

The game is a blast. I’ve finished one third and it’s fun, humourous, challenging and satisfying. Plus, the 10-year-old graphics are still cute.

You start out as the Meccs, heavily-armed goofballs who crash on their way to a vacation planet. They end up fighting the evil Sea Reapers, who are oppressing the native Smartie population. You can jetpack around, blast bad guys from a mile away and carry weird aliens on your back. You can also blast the indigenous life forms for meat. Fun.

I also picked up Outcast, which I’m saving for later. The story is a bit of a hybrid of Stargate and Timeline, but not too derivative. And the sound is great. The voxel graphics are interesting. The game plays like a Zelda game, with guns and aliens. So far, it’s fun.

Retro gaming is fun, and cheap. The best part is, these games might not have graphics up to today’s standards, but the gameplay is so good that I forget the graphics after a few minutes.

That’s the mark of a truly great game. Graphics are not the most important thing — gameplay, story and fun factor are.

I just am blown away by Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. The game is the best FPS I have played in a very long time, and its setting — a sort of post-apocalyptic Ukraine — is very atmospheric and compelling.

Yeah, old news, I know, but I picked the game up for $5 on Steam recently, thinking, ‘hey, if it sucks, oh well, I haven’t lost anything.’ It certainly doesn’t suck — I am enjoying it more than any FPS I’ve played since… hmm… probably since the first time I played Far Cry. But this game is deeper, more interesting and has a free-form design I love that lets the player go anywhere and do anything. You might not survive, but you are free to explore.

There is a mod available that greatly improves the gameplay, making it more random, making monster encounters a great deal more terrifying, makes textures look better and makes nighttime a lot scarier. There are a lot more “shit-your-pants” moments — trying to complete a mission in total blackness, avoiding dangerous anomalies and all of a sudden scary monsters are eating you will do that — and it’s more challenging. But it also rewards players — some powerful guns are available earlier, and you can actually repair your gear, although the mod-maker has balanced it well so repairs are a money sink. You will get a lot of money, but not as fast or as easy as in the unmodded game.

The mod is called Oblivion Lost and yes, it does work with the Steam version of the game, you just have to put it in the right folder.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qJ-qjbnRqU]

One of the first games I ever played on the PC is now available on Steam. Awesome!

It’s even better than I remember it. A fun side-scroller with a few surprises, a twisted sense of humour (but clean) and it’s still fun, after all these years!

Playing it I can see why John Romero, John and Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall went on to be some of the biggest and best game designers in the business.

$2.50 on Steam gets you all five Keen games (I thought there were six? Maybe I’m not remembering correctly, it’s been a long time). Well worth it in my opinion, and they work flawlessly in Windows thanks to some wizardry with DosBox by whoever prepped the games for release on Steam.