#46 Kirby Air Ride / NGC

Because City Trial is the best game mode ever made.

46

Star Wars Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire

• Mac OS
• 1995
• Rail Shooter
• LucasArts

'Star Wars Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire' is a very important game to me as well. When we got our first home computer in 1995, this was the first game that was bought with it and is as such, it is the first computer game, not console, computer game, I ever played. A good one to start off with for sure.

Not only was it the first computer game I played, it was also the game that introduced me to the Star Wars Universe, which is still one of my favorite things in popular culture. I was immediately drawn in, from the first appearance of Darth Vader in the cool live-action opening cutscene to the final destruction of the hidden TIE Fighter factory. The story, the universe, the levels and character quotes, I can dream this game from start to finish.

The game is a rail-shooter, with a couple of playing styles. There's flying levels and on-foot levels, both in two sub styles; third person and first person. The third person flying levels are all about avoiding objects at fast pace while the first person levels are about shooting down waves of enemy fighters. Like any rail-shooter, the game is short but with a very high replayability factor, which I did, many, many, many times.

#45
During half-time, something happens in this game, that doesn't actually happen in this sport in real life. At least, not here anyway.

The Liquid Laser correctly guessed my game for today: Descent.

In this game you play a pilot of a spacecraft that is trying to destroy some mining asteroids, on which the mining robots are gone crazy and attacking humans. To avoid a bigger threat you blow up the asteroids. To do this you have to shoot robots, rescue personel and navigate mining tunnels in true 3D. Your ship operates at zero gravity and you have full control over all movements, so you have six degrees of freedom. This means you cannot only go forward, backward and left and right, but also up and down. You can turn not only left and right and up and down, but also turn around yourself. This can be very disorienting. It is hard to recognize a room you was before in, if you come to it from another  tunnel and are now turned upside down. Luckily you have an automap to help you:

Oh shoot. Your mission in each level is overloading the reactor core (by shooting at it) and then it goes into self-destruct sequence navigate to the exit. It is helpful if you found the exit before and memorized the way from the reactor to the exit, because if you get lost and don't leave before the countdown is up, you die with all the mining robots.

This game was immense fun, the challenge of navigating and orienting in these mining tunnels while on the threat of being attacked by robots kept you on edge. Music was good. This game had fully 3D enemies, in difference to Doom and fully 3D-environments - Doom in difference had always horizontal or vertical surfaces, never something slanted. So Descent was a big step-up in level-design.

I read on Wikipedia that the source code was released later, leading to ports to more modern platforms including Oculus Rift and Wii homebrew channel.

Wikipedia, MobyGames, OGDB, IGDB

This video must have been shot with a later modified source, as the resolution is upped, the other content is still original though:

Hint for my game #43: That game was a surprisingly approach to an overdone genre.

Yep, Shining Force is it.


Your game is The Cave.

Nope.  I should have said it was a PS2 game.

Yeah, that is it!

is it really fates?

#47 - Minority Report: Everybody Runs
#46 - TimeSplitters 2

Hint for #45 - The entry number of this renowned series corresponds with the final digit of its year of release!

#55 Half Life 2 Edit: 45! I mean 45! Thanks Rocket!

The FPS genre is something that I became bored with for several years. After Halo came out the entire genre just stopped improving for 14 years. It was all the same basic weapons, the same corridors. This was especially true of the single player campaigns. But in the middle of all this along came Half Life 2 with it's Gravity Gun, physics based puzzles, and constant change of pace. You always seemed to be doing something different in this game, and were always being introduced to new game concepts. This game was a blast, from the Buzzsaws to the Ant Lion assault, to the crazy energy bouncy balls at the end. Too bad it'll never get a sequel. :(

I haven't played Doom or the Wolfenstein games yet, but I hope they hold a candle to this, as far as single player goes. 

This clue is even more vague than my clues. ;)

I'm going to guess Planescape Torment.