GB's 100 Games: 65-61

Another day, another group of five video games I'd like to share. Today's batch includes games from across my entire life, some obscure and some less so.

65: The Pipeworks Godzilla Series
Genre: Fighting
System: GameCube/PS2/Wii
Developer: Pipeworks
Publisher: Atari
Released: October 8, 2002/November 16, 2004/December 5, 2007

These three Godzilla fighting games certainly have their flaws (especially Unleashed) but they all provided me with hours of entertainment and a rare chance to play as a Godzilla monster.

The first game, Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee, is a well-made and fairly straightforward fighter that sees you taking control of one of eleven different monsters and engaging in combat with the others. The second game, Godzilla: Save the Earth, is similar but expanded, with a larger roster of fighters and a set of minigames that vary in enjoyment. The third game, Godzilla Unleashed, set out to tell a dynamic story with alliances and branching paths, but fell far short of this goal due to development issues. While the first two are straight-up good games, Unleashed is more of a Big Dumb Vidya Game. It still kept me playing for hours and hours, though!

64: Operation Neptune
Genre: Edutainment
System: DOS
Developer: The Learning Company
Publisher: The Learning Company
Released: 1991

If you grew up in the nineties like I did, you were likely exposed to a variety of educational computer games in your elementary schools' computer lab. The most famous and beloved of these is easily Oregon Trail, but there were other notable titles like Math Blasters, Number Munchers, Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, and Kid Pix. But as much as I loved shooting two dozen bears and carrying half of one back to the wagon, my favorite was always Operation Neptune.

In Operation Neptune, you play as a submarine tasked to recover the parts of a space capsule that contained important scientific research, but crashed into the ocean with its' vital cargo scattered across the sea. As your sub, the eponymous Neptune, you need to find the parts and also solve math problems.

Yes, math problems. Every so often your submarine's light will flash, signalling an incoming math question. These questions all have to do with submarines (adjusting ballast, working out time schedules, etc). Also providing a math problem is the combination lock at the end of every stage - you need to solve a math problem correctly to gain entry to your carrier to refuel.

On top of that, you also need to face off with the local wildlife. You aren't allowed to kill wild animals on this mission, so instead you need to use good timing and deft keystrokes to maneuver around fish, shrimp, sharks, sea lilies, and stingrays to grab the capsule parts and get to the exit. You're also equipped with a stockpile of ink pellets that render most enemies temporarily harmless, allowing you to slip by. Getting hit or giving the wrong answer to a math problem saps your life bar, and if it empties the mission is failed. Fortunately, a friendly dolphin named Zoom shows up every so often with a fresh tank of oxygen to restore your health (although he's kind of terrible at actually giving you the oxygen so you'd better catch him quick).

The final level throws math out the window and focuses purely on a tough-as-nails obstacle run against scary mutant fish that are immune to ink. It took a long time before I cleared this stage, and even then the second difficulty level features completely new stages.

Operation Neptune is a wonderful example of learning made fun and deserves a place in the classroom even today.

63: Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Stadium 2
Genre: Turn-based Battling
System: Nintendo 64
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: February 29, 2000/March 28, 2001

Two extremely memorable games from my childhood, the Stadium duo has never been topped for 3D Pokemon battling, despite the best efforts of Genius Sonority. Why HAL stopped doing this series I cannot imagine.

Both Stadium games are excellent Pokemon battling venues, with tons of cool remixed music, rental Pokemon for people who don't have any good Pokemon on their team, and lots of fun features like being able to tweak your team in Professor Oak's lab, playing Mario Party-esque minigames, and playing your Pokemon Game Boy games on the big screen with the Game Boy Tower. Also fun is Earl's Academy from the second game, featuring a wide variety of lessons to show off the many, many techniques possible in battle, complete with quizzes, a massive library of information on every Pokemon, and hilarious voice acting from Earl himself (AHHHH, YES YES!)

The Stadiums aren't as fun without a copy of Pokemon RBY or GSC, but I remember managing to get a lot of entertainment value from them even before I had my own Game Boy carts to use.

62: Deadly Creatures
Genre: Action-Adventure
System: Nintendo Wii
Developer: Rainbow Studios
Publisher: THQ
Released: February 9, 2009

One of the most unique and engrossing titles I've ever played, Deadly Creatures is a short but memorable adventure well worth playing. There are ten levels. In the odd-numbered levels you play as a tarantula, and in the even-numbered levels you control a scorpion. The game's simple but dark storyline unfolds around them, and the animals are only minor characters in the grand scope of things.

The entire game takes place over the course of one day in the Arizona desert, and features two men, George and Wade, searching for a buried chest of Civil War gold. On the animal side of things, George is a bit of a packrat and happens to collect animal specimens - live and dead. Also showing up throughout the adventure are an incredibly persistent rattlesnake, a couple of Gila monsters, a hive of tarantula wasps, a massive society of black widows, and more than a few lizards, wolf spiders, rats, and beetles. Even a few other scorpions and tarantulas show up.

Content is a bit lacking, but what's here is good. The levels are fairly lengthy and diverse but there's only ten of them, and the story mode is the only mode of play - no bonus challenges or multiplayer brawling here. Tracking down hidden grubs unlocks some bonus concept art, while the rare leaf crickets increase your maximum HP. There's also three difficulty levels - Normal is just right until two-thirds of the way through the game, when the obscenely difficult horned lizards (and to a lesser extent the rats) appear. In both of my playthroughs of this game I had to go down to Easy once those bastards showed up.

The graphics are pretty good for a Wii game, and the soundtrack is magnificent dark ambience, like a horror movie score. The result is an extremely ambient experience that makes me feel like the world is truly alive - this is something I crave in gaming, and something very few games I've played have managed to pull off. Deadly Creatures nails it.

I'd love to play a Deadly Creatures 2, but this title was sadly overlooked when it was released, and THQ's current financial situation casts heavy doubt on them taking any more risks. You can probably find Deadly Creatures for cheap nowadays, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something different. If nothing else, you could play this while waiting for more games to come out for Wii U.

61: Assault Heroes
Genre: Shmup
System: Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade)
Developer: Wanako
Publisher: Sierra
Released: December 13, 2006

Assault Heroes is exactly what I want and expect from a downloadable game: It's simple, it's inexpensive, and it's fun. It's a Big Dumb Vidya Game. A conversation I had with my mom while playing Assault Heroes pretty much sums it all up:

Mom: *looks at screen* So what's this game?
Me: This is Assault Heroes.
Mom: What do you do?
Me: You're a car with a gun on it. Everything is trying to kill you. Shoot them.
Mom: Now THAT'S a video game!

It is indeed. Assault Heroes features five fairly lengthy stages, each one broken down into checkpoints. Your car has a lifebar, and will regenerate from damage if you can avoid getting hit for a while. But even if your car blows up, you're not finished - the driver will emerge to continue the fight on foot. Surviving for a short time will cause another car to spawn on the battlefield, and if you can get back in you've successfully cheated death! There are also cramped underground tunnel areas that you are forced to navigate on foot, and these are much tougher - while they are optional, one hit when not in your car kills you, and if you die during an on-foot section the game doesn't give you another chance, instead putting you back in your car and continuing the main game.

You've got five weapons in Assault Heroes, the first three of which can be swapped between at will. There's your basic pew-pew gun, a flamethrower, and a grenade launcher. The flamethrower is good for sweeping large crowds of weak foot soldiers, the grenade launcher is best used on big and durable enemies fighting you alone, and the normal gun is a decent default weapon. You also have a limited stock of powerful grenades and screen-clearing bombs to use when you're in trouble.

Assault Heroes doesn't do anything special, but it does everything right. It's a great way to kill a few afternoons.