Get off my lawn!
28/11/08 11:02 Filed in: Reviews
It’s 1998. Chances are you’re getting pretty sick of hearing “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden on the radio. You’ve just watched “Saving Private Ryan” for the third time in theatres and are wondering if anyone would ever make a WWII shooter. And you’re probably also wondering when Seamus Blackley would get on with releasing “Jurassic Park: Trespasser”.
Ok, hop out of the time machine and get back to 2008. It’s now 10 years since Trespasser’s release, and it has become a bit of a punch line. The big 3 in game reviews gave the game ridiculously low scores at the time. IGN gave it the best score out of the three by awarding it 4.7/10. While GameSpot and Computer Gaming World gave it 3.9/10 and 1/5 respectively. Much was said about Trespasser’s bugs and poor performance on low-mid range computer systems. Much was said about the odd behavior of the dinosaurs that inhabited Site B. And of course much was said about the gunplay, and jumping mechanics. But lets put all those reviews out of our heads and take a look at Trespasser again 10 years later.
First off, let’s look at the other games that we would have been playing in 1998. More specifically, let’s look at the other PC 1st person shooters. Half-Life, Unreal, and SiN. There are 2 really phenomenal games there. Half-Life and Unreal did some amazing things with their stories. Both also did a great job at immersing the player in the game world. And both set pretty high standards for graphics in games. Just look at those polys:
Half-Life
Unreal:
Both were cutting edge for 1998, and if you did any PC gaming in the late 90’s, you probably owned a copy of both of these games.
But let’s not mince words. Trespasser was not Unreal, or Half-Life. Both Half-Life, and Unreal had over the top Sci-Fi storylines with over the top action. They epitomized run and gun action, and were not for the faint of heart or slow of mouse. Trespasser on the other hand opted for slow, and methodical gameplay that attempted to be much more realistic. So with all that in mind, let’s get on with it!
First thing to note is that there are many third party patches and mods that enable the user to raise the resolution, and enable modern graphics card thingamabobs. These various mods make the game much prettier than it was originally. But for the purpose of this review I am not using any of them. I’m just using the base install of Trespasser in all its buggy glory. And not just that, I’m running it in software mode. No 3D acceleration. All in all though, I think it looks pretty decent:
The first thing you notice in game is the high production values. Sir Richard Attenborough, and Minnie Driver voice the characters in the game(although you never actually see any characters other than the dinosaurs). The story was pretty simple and straightforward. You(Driver) were on a plane that crashed on Site B(the island from the second Jurassic Park film). You need to get off the island. During your attempts to leave Site B, you remember tidbits from John Hammond’s(Attenborough) memoires that revolve around the creation of Jurassic Park and Site B. The end result is some pretty good VO acting. Especially considering you never actually see a person’s face in the entire game.
The second thing you notice is how slowly you move around the world. This isn’t Doom. You don’t close great distances in short periods of time. Many have said that this is a flaw in the game, but I would stand to say that this is one of it’s greatest strengths. Again, the end goal was realism. And most shooters are not realistic in the manner in which character are able to tear through a level.
However, I can see how some people might be turned off by the slower pace due to the size of the levels. This game is BIG. Much bigger than most games of the time. Even still, this isn’t an open world game. The island is fairly linear in it’s design. You have a start position, and an end position. How you get to that end position is up to you.
Firearms and gunplay is handled in a realistic manner as well. Where most games have a crosshair up on screen, Trespasser forces the user to line up sights on any gun to judge your aim. I personally love this. After all, the character you’re controlling has never fired a gun in her life. It’s not very realistic to think that she would be able to sharpshoot a raptor at 50 metres. The good thing though is that after awhile, you get good at lining up sights and can pick off dino’s from greater and greater distances. However, if ever you see a mounted machine gun or rifle on the back of a jeep...don’t even bother to try and use it. Aiming those suckers is damn near impossible.
Since there’s no on-screen HUD, the designers had to figure out an interesting way to relate to the player their health level. Enter the gratuitous booby shots:
As you probably guessed, the more filled in the tattoo on your left boob, the lower your health is.
Probably the most talked about feature for Trespasser was it’s physics engine. Was it realistic? Fairly. Was it perfect? Hell no! Let me expand on that. The way that objects interacted with each other and the game world was fantastic. So fantastic that I feel we didn’t see any other games capture that level of realism till much more recent games(read Half-Life 2, and Crysis). The problems however lie in some of the jumping and stacking puzzles. The most infuriating parts of the game were the jumping puzzles. Mainly because it was very hard to line jumps up, and even when you did line them up properly, half the time, the game wouldn’t register that you hit the jump button. But like most games, you tend to figure out ways to compensate for these shortfalls.
Finally, let’s talk dinosaurs. The original intent for the dino’s was that they would have moods. And each dino would act according to whatever mood it was in. You may see a carnivore ignore you if it was already chomping on some food. Or if you shot it, you might see the little bastard run in fear or charge in anger. The problem is that the developers ran out of time. set all carnivorous dino’s to charge and attack you once you’re discovered. This was fairly disappointing to me honestly. But I can understand the decision to axe that feature.
One other problem that the dino’s had was that...well...they were clumsy. Raptors and T-Rex’s can be seen tripping over things, and getting stuck on geometry. One time, I even saw a raptor just completely ignore me to charge off a cliff. I wonder what that raptor was thinking. Possibly there was a story of love lost in there somewhere. Something that might explain why a perfectly healthy raptor decided to take it’s own life. The only thing was it survived the drop. So maybe it was only a cry for help.
So...what was the game like after taking all the flaws into account? Well, in my opinion...awesome. It’s realistic approach generated actual moments of fear. Imagine this. You are walking through the jungle and hear a noise. You spin around to see this:
Or even worse, you see this:
Or even worse than that, you see this:
I know what you’re thinking. And yes, the raptor knocked the fucking gun out of my hands. This game could be downright terrifying at times. And as a morbid joke on the player, if you are killed, you get to watch as the raptor or t-rex eats you:
So what about the rest of the game? The parts where you aren’t running for your life. Well, as mentioned earlier, the jumping puzzles are lame. But other than that, there can be a large amount of flexibility for the gameplayer. For example, I was stuck inside a little walled village. With a big gate blocking me from progressing further. The game wants you to get out by finding keycards scattered throughout the village in various buildings. So I thought “Fuck that”, grabbed a bunch of crates, stacked them all up in front of the gate, and hopped over. And I wasn’t presented with some invisible wall, or anything else stopping me from progressing. Nope, I just got to continue on with my game. That’s the reason why I love this game. The player is able to use his/her imagination to come up with interesting solutions to some rather difficult challenges.
--Raptor bearing down on you...seconds to act...what would you do?--
--Personally, I quickly closed the door and barricaded it...picked up the gun...and kicked some jurassic ass---
So this game sounds really cool right? Why was it panned? Why did it fail? Why does it get included on so many worst of all time lists? Well I think it failed for 2 main reasons. Firstly, it bit off more than it could chew. Or to be more specific, more than the average home computer could chew. Even if you had the most smoking PC in 1998, you would be hard pressed to see this game in any form other than a slideshow. That infuriated a lot of gamers. And second, it bucked the growing trend of faster and less realistic gameplay that many 1st person shooters were exhibiting in the late 90’s. And the visible game bugs did not help matters much either.
So for those reasons I can understand why it got so many low review scores. But what about now? My iPod has more computational power than most computers of 1998. Pretty much any computer you run nowadays will tear through this game like a champ. It is amazing how quickly this game becomes fun when you can play it the way it was meant to be played. When you add in all the mods and graphical improvements still being made, it becomes a pretty good looking game.
So how do I score this game? Well I don’t. I tend to find review scores misleading. So I’m just going to say this. I recommend that if you see this game kicking around somewhere, give it a try. Or even give it a second chance if you played it before. That’s If you can find it of course. However, if you do see it lying in some second hand store, or on Ebay, it’s likely going to be fairly cheap. So good hunting...oh and...turn around!
Ok, hop out of the time machine and get back to 2008. It’s now 10 years since Trespasser’s release, and it has become a bit of a punch line. The big 3 in game reviews gave the game ridiculously low scores at the time. IGN gave it the best score out of the three by awarding it 4.7/10. While GameSpot and Computer Gaming World gave it 3.9/10 and 1/5 respectively. Much was said about Trespasser’s bugs and poor performance on low-mid range computer systems. Much was said about the odd behavior of the dinosaurs that inhabited Site B. And of course much was said about the gunplay, and jumping mechanics. But lets put all those reviews out of our heads and take a look at Trespasser again 10 years later.
First off, let’s look at the other games that we would have been playing in 1998. More specifically, let’s look at the other PC 1st person shooters. Half-Life, Unreal, and SiN. There are 2 really phenomenal games there. Half-Life and Unreal did some amazing things with their stories. Both also did a great job at immersing the player in the game world. And both set pretty high standards for graphics in games. Just look at those polys:
Half-Life
Unreal:
Both were cutting edge for 1998, and if you did any PC gaming in the late 90’s, you probably owned a copy of both of these games.
But let’s not mince words. Trespasser was not Unreal, or Half-Life. Both Half-Life, and Unreal had over the top Sci-Fi storylines with over the top action. They epitomized run and gun action, and were not for the faint of heart or slow of mouse. Trespasser on the other hand opted for slow, and methodical gameplay that attempted to be much more realistic. So with all that in mind, let’s get on with it!
First thing to note is that there are many third party patches and mods that enable the user to raise the resolution, and enable modern graphics card thingamabobs. These various mods make the game much prettier than it was originally. But for the purpose of this review I am not using any of them. I’m just using the base install of Trespasser in all its buggy glory. And not just that, I’m running it in software mode. No 3D acceleration. All in all though, I think it looks pretty decent:
The first thing you notice in game is the high production values. Sir Richard Attenborough, and Minnie Driver voice the characters in the game(although you never actually see any characters other than the dinosaurs). The story was pretty simple and straightforward. You(Driver) were on a plane that crashed on Site B(the island from the second Jurassic Park film). You need to get off the island. During your attempts to leave Site B, you remember tidbits from John Hammond’s(Attenborough) memoires that revolve around the creation of Jurassic Park and Site B. The end result is some pretty good VO acting. Especially considering you never actually see a person’s face in the entire game.
The second thing you notice is how slowly you move around the world. This isn’t Doom. You don’t close great distances in short periods of time. Many have said that this is a flaw in the game, but I would stand to say that this is one of it’s greatest strengths. Again, the end goal was realism. And most shooters are not realistic in the manner in which character are able to tear through a level.
However, I can see how some people might be turned off by the slower pace due to the size of the levels. This game is BIG. Much bigger than most games of the time. Even still, this isn’t an open world game. The island is fairly linear in it’s design. You have a start position, and an end position. How you get to that end position is up to you.
Firearms and gunplay is handled in a realistic manner as well. Where most games have a crosshair up on screen, Trespasser forces the user to line up sights on any gun to judge your aim. I personally love this. After all, the character you’re controlling has never fired a gun in her life. It’s not very realistic to think that she would be able to sharpshoot a raptor at 50 metres. The good thing though is that after awhile, you get good at lining up sights and can pick off dino’s from greater and greater distances. However, if ever you see a mounted machine gun or rifle on the back of a jeep...don’t even bother to try and use it. Aiming those suckers is damn near impossible.
Since there’s no on-screen HUD, the designers had to figure out an interesting way to relate to the player their health level. Enter the gratuitous booby shots:
As you probably guessed, the more filled in the tattoo on your left boob, the lower your health is.
Probably the most talked about feature for Trespasser was it’s physics engine. Was it realistic? Fairly. Was it perfect? Hell no! Let me expand on that. The way that objects interacted with each other and the game world was fantastic. So fantastic that I feel we didn’t see any other games capture that level of realism till much more recent games(read Half-Life 2, and Crysis). The problems however lie in some of the jumping and stacking puzzles. The most infuriating parts of the game were the jumping puzzles. Mainly because it was very hard to line jumps up, and even when you did line them up properly, half the time, the game wouldn’t register that you hit the jump button. But like most games, you tend to figure out ways to compensate for these shortfalls.
Finally, let’s talk dinosaurs. The original intent for the dino’s was that they would have moods. And each dino would act according to whatever mood it was in. You may see a carnivore ignore you if it was already chomping on some food. Or if you shot it, you might see the little bastard run in fear or charge in anger. The problem is that the developers ran out of time. set all carnivorous dino’s to charge and attack you once you’re discovered. This was fairly disappointing to me honestly. But I can understand the decision to axe that feature.
One other problem that the dino’s had was that...well...they were clumsy. Raptors and T-Rex’s can be seen tripping over things, and getting stuck on geometry. One time, I even saw a raptor just completely ignore me to charge off a cliff. I wonder what that raptor was thinking. Possibly there was a story of love lost in there somewhere. Something that might explain why a perfectly healthy raptor decided to take it’s own life. The only thing was it survived the drop. So maybe it was only a cry for help.
So...what was the game like after taking all the flaws into account? Well, in my opinion...awesome. It’s realistic approach generated actual moments of fear. Imagine this. You are walking through the jungle and hear a noise. You spin around to see this:
Or even worse, you see this:
Or even worse than that, you see this:
I know what you’re thinking. And yes, the raptor knocked the fucking gun out of my hands. This game could be downright terrifying at times. And as a morbid joke on the player, if you are killed, you get to watch as the raptor or t-rex eats you:
So what about the rest of the game? The parts where you aren’t running for your life. Well, as mentioned earlier, the jumping puzzles are lame. But other than that, there can be a large amount of flexibility for the gameplayer. For example, I was stuck inside a little walled village. With a big gate blocking me from progressing further. The game wants you to get out by finding keycards scattered throughout the village in various buildings. So I thought “Fuck that”, grabbed a bunch of crates, stacked them all up in front of the gate, and hopped over. And I wasn’t presented with some invisible wall, or anything else stopping me from progressing. Nope, I just got to continue on with my game. That’s the reason why I love this game. The player is able to use his/her imagination to come up with interesting solutions to some rather difficult challenges.
--Raptor bearing down on you...seconds to act...what would you do?--
--Personally, I quickly closed the door and barricaded it...picked up the gun...and kicked some jurassic ass---
So this game sounds really cool right? Why was it panned? Why did it fail? Why does it get included on so many worst of all time lists? Well I think it failed for 2 main reasons. Firstly, it bit off more than it could chew. Or to be more specific, more than the average home computer could chew. Even if you had the most smoking PC in 1998, you would be hard pressed to see this game in any form other than a slideshow. That infuriated a lot of gamers. And second, it bucked the growing trend of faster and less realistic gameplay that many 1st person shooters were exhibiting in the late 90’s. And the visible game bugs did not help matters much either.
So for those reasons I can understand why it got so many low review scores. But what about now? My iPod has more computational power than most computers of 1998. Pretty much any computer you run nowadays will tear through this game like a champ. It is amazing how quickly this game becomes fun when you can play it the way it was meant to be played. When you add in all the mods and graphical improvements still being made, it becomes a pretty good looking game.
So how do I score this game? Well I don’t. I tend to find review scores misleading. So I’m just going to say this. I recommend that if you see this game kicking around somewhere, give it a try. Or even give it a second chance if you played it before. That’s If you can find it of course. However, if you do see it lying in some second hand store, or on Ebay, it’s likely going to be fairly cheap. So good hunting...oh and...turn around!