Caves of Thor

 There's been some games that annoy me. Some are new, some are old, but they usually have one thing in common, and that's me saying "I'm never playing this game again". Caves of Thor, though, man, it's on a whole different level of that phrase. Caves of Thor is like, almost the meaning of it. The epitome of my catchphrase, "I'm never playing this game again". It makes you think that if you ever went back to 1990, all there would be is Caves of Thor and we'd all be playing horrible PC games, but luckily that's not the case. This game was invented by Todd Replogle, who later became one of Duke Nukem 3D's lead programmers, and this is also the first title Apogee picked up that wasn't created by one of them. Let me explain this abomination a little bit more.

 Sound: 0/10

The first thing you will do is press the S key to turn off the sound, unless you were like me (who didn't see that to begin with) and just sat there listening to the worst-ever PC speaker orchestra. I'm serious, something is wrong with this game's music, it's absolutely nervewracking. All the points, gone.

Graphics: 1/10

Some miserable attempt at anything that resembles a crap is what you get with this one. You're going to need to decypher the games cryptic code of ASCII objects that are supposed to either be items, enemies, or doorways. There's a lot of nothing spectacular, -9 fat ones.

Gameplay: 1/10

The controls can be summed up to the equivalent of running a marathon in molasses. They're just that sticky. The screen can't even catch up with your smiley warrior when he's moving. Make sure that you're aiming in the correct direction, then press space to attack enemies with your exploding spear or something. If you try to throw more than one, your current one will disappear in mid-flight, so don't do that. You're going to need to find shields, potions, and keys to get to the next area. I got extremely frustrated in what I guess was a river, trying to fight my way against the current because I couldn't see anywhere else to go. -9 and don't whine.

Overall: 1/10

Basically, this game gets one point overall because it's a game. Other than that, it's a pretty horrible creation that probably should have never seen the light of day. Some people may like it, and my rebuttal is this: PLAY ZZT INSTEAD if you're looking for ASCII graphics and top-down gameplay. When I was playing this game, I noticed that you say "Oops" if you shoot a wall. This leads me to believe that, possibly, this is where Duke Nukem's "Where is it?" was created. It's even more credible when you consider who made the game. I could probably ramble on and on about how bad this game is, maybe so that you don't have to play it, or maybe so that we can learn from some of the fatal flaws of gaming. Give it a shot, it's free, but in the menu it says the source code is available for $199.

http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/Caves_of_Thor.html

Dark Ages

Dark Ages is a bit like the creepy game with a dunce-cap, banished forever to its corner to think about what it has done, only to return and immediately be shunned again. Apogee released this game in 1991, alongside some of their more popular releases. First thing you notice, you're Fabio or something, and you were exiled from your heirloom city by an evil wizard, so you have to learn how to fight and make your way through a bunch of caves and stuff finding random objects like apples to give to a wizard so he can show you the way to the next area. Sound repetitive? There's three episodes of this nonsense.

Gameplay: 4/10

So we're off to see the wizard, gotta cross this river, fall in a hole and die. Get attacked by bats and spiders, die. Touch a cobweb, die. Eventually you're going to learn to not touch a damn thing in this game, and this is one of the only times some extremely stiff controls are actually going to help you to be precise as a laser surgery. They're still stuck on the kick that all video games are pinball machines, so they keep a score tally and high score list. You have eight health points, you regain one when you've collected 10 coins, and if you die, you're given the option to save and restart from your current level, with the same amount of health and everything, liable to die again very easily. Your character (Fabio) can shoot this sonicboom-esque wave thing that barely does any damage at all, and until you pick up the powerups, you're going to need to furiously tap the ALT key if you want to get anything to die. I'm on easy mode and this game is still hard, but just for kicks I tried the third episode, and it's more of the same, except no wizard. The game is much more difficult here and you can't seem to shoot fast enough. Between all this madness, the level hazards whooping your butt, and the terrible game premise, I've taken away 6 points. When you play this game, do yourself a favor and hit F10 followed by =, it'll engage rapid fire mode and you can save yourself an ALT key.

 Graphics: 5/10

Although being pretty lame as far as creativity in the game world goes, they do a good job on the environments. Problem is, I still don't know what half of the enemies or terrain are, and they're the same thing throughout the entire length of the game. -5 points for no noticeable variety.

Sound: 4.5/10

It's the first shareware game to feature Adlib music and sound card support. The noise you make when you attack is much like an old Atari game, and it gets very annoying. The music was good, until I realized the tracks were quite sparse, but they segue nicely. A nice swish would have been a better attack sound, but the music is good. -5.5 points.

Overall: 4.25/10

It's a good thing that most people missed this one. I gave it a good try, mainly because it was super challenging, but I soon realized it was mostly impossible to play. I assume it gave Apogee a pretty sour taste in their mouths, but they didn't choose to remove it from distribution until 2009. For now, take a little bite out of Apogee's history, and download this game from the link below.
http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/download/dark-ages/

Sango Fighter

 I had this game on a shareware disc, I remember playing it with only two characters, and not particularly enjoying it very much. Originally released in 1993 by a Taiwanese group, Panda Entertainment, this game was about to be released under Apogee's name but wasn't. Instead it went through an independent release and suffered miserably through every step of its life as a PC fighting game. Think about this: It's Street Fighter meets Romance of the Three Kingdoms (modern day equivalent; Dynasty Warriors) minus the strategy element.

 Gameplay: 2/10

Barely playable as a fighting game, I sat there for a little while trying to figure out what buttons to press. Figured out some hadoken style moves but couldn't really get the grasp of it, ass handed to me every time. This game feels more like a Tiger Electronics handheld LCD game, only those can be fun. There's a story mode and stuff here, but who gives a crap about all this historical stuff? -8 points for bad gaming experience.

 Graphics: 5/10

So they're vivid, the characters and backgrounds look fantastic, and the screenshots make this game look like a gem hidden in the sand. Good job, now if it could only run itself, we'd be in business. Seriously, it's so slow, so unresponsive, and always has been, -5 points on that.

Sound: 3/10

Hooray for Adlib music and digital sound, you get three points. -7 points for it all being really hard to listen to. 

Overall: 2/10

This game was released freeware style in just 2009 when a North American company picked up the rights to the game. I assume that means they purchased them, and I can tell you right now, if you choose to listen, as there are bones in your body, it was a bad idea. Unless they just go around, acquiring abandoned titles and giving them away, that's some abandonware rouge shit. All I know is that nobody bought this game back in 1993, thank god, and nobody needs to play it now, because I just wrote this review. For real, when it comes to fighting games on your PC, it might be a better plan to just go to the arcade, and the fact that I chose to do this tonight makes me cringe. Don't waste your time with Sango Fighter, unless your time consists of playing horrible games to feel better about yourself, like me.

http://www.sangofighter.com/download.htm

Ken's Labyrinth

Remember all those games where you'd wander around aimlessly in first person, killing a few enemies and then taking a few hours to find out where to go? Welcome to Ken's Labyrinth, a game designed by Ken Silverman and published by Epic Megagames in 1993. There's some aliens that are using unintelligent lifeforms to make jelly, and for some reason, they stole your dog, and you have to go in Ken's Labyrinth to find it. Ken is an extremely evil superalien that finds it entertaining when you put a bunch of weird lifeforms in the same place and see what happens. So hey, what are you waiting for? Enter...

Gameplay: 5/10
In these years, first-person gaming was no joke. There were already games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Blake Stone, and the Catacomb series, except this one is missing something; Violence. Ken's Labyrinth is some odd blend of all the aforementioned games, and I even see some things happening here that you didn't see until Ken's future games, like Duke Nukem 3D. Early on in the title we discover we can throw some sort of blob at the enemies, serving as your primary attack for most of the game. The opponents you face are a collection of aliens and other races, and they're about the stupidest fools you've ever seen. The best strategy is to just open a door, back up, let them all funnel in, and use your dumb blob thing. Eventually the levels get more intricate and the enemies more abundant, but you're still just running around looking for keys into the next room so you can go up the stairs to the next level to look for the keys to the next room so you can blah blah blah blah blah. -5 points for not too much different going on.

Graphics: 5/10
To compare it to something, let's use Doom, which came out in 1993 as well. The first thing I notice is the lack of floor and ceiling textures. There's also no "vertical" gameplay, everything is on a one-floor plane. The enemies are lame looking and don't have much visual pizzazz. Same with the items. There's walls that say "Shoot this wall" or "walk through this wall", and I feel like I'm in a weird little kids nightmare. -5 points for almost everything looking the same.

Sound: 5/10
There's some digitized sound effects that do the job, including the typical "Oh." and "Aah." that slips from your mouth whenever you eat an apple or something. The music was pretty cool, a couple songs I liked, a lot more I didn't, but it just doesn't fit the game. -5 points for not being very atmospheric.

Overall: 5/10
It blows my mind to think that this guy programmed Duke Nukem 3D and all those other great games that I mentioned in this post earlier. For real though, does anybody want to chug their way through a freakin' ugly maze trying to find the way out? Probably not. Do you want to have some lame weapons and items to use? Nope. Do the enemies make the game more fun? Not at all. It's still a classic game though, showing progression in the genre while keeping it very much the same. That's why I give this game a five.
http://www.advsys.net/ken/klab.htm

Alf: The First Adventure

Originally on the Atari and Commodore but ported to DOS in 1988, Alf was supposed to be a game based on the popular TV show around that time period. You're Alf, you crashed your spaceship into the Tanner family's garage, and you need to run around your maze-like neighborhood collecting cats to eat and grabbing your spaceship parts. Make sure to watch out for the Dog Catcher and Willie Tanner, they're going to do some crazy stuff to you!

Gameplay: 2/10
In order to review this fairly, I should compare it to some other games from 1988. There's a lot of good titles, like Gauntlet, Legendary Wings, and even Zelda II. It just wasn't a good year for Alf though, because his game plays like hell, and in Alf's world, it's no easy task to complete your core objectives. The cats are impossible, even when you corner them they're going to run away from you. I managed to get a few and lock them in my garage for sweet feasting later, but that little kid Willie got me and made me release them all. Damn. -8 points for "what's going on?".

Graphics: 1/10
The Alf head on the cover pretty much sums it up, because all you are is a head, moving around. It looks like there is about four colors in the palette, and none of them are very pretty. Every now and then you grab a pizza from the street, or run into a trash can. Everything just skips around and is generally pretty horrible to look at. -9 points for the horrible neighborhood maze of badly rendered nightmare.

Sound: 0/10
I hate it. Long beeps or boops that hold up the gameplay. Seriously, everything stops for a second while the game beeps at you. -all the points for it barely working.

Overall: 1/10
You know what's humiliating? The fact that I played this game altogether. It is useless, worthless, not fun or creative, and barely related to the show that it was based off of. If I could get my time back, well damn. I'd get it back. The game's free but should have been erased.
http://hotud.org/component/remository/func-startdown/17154/