In 1998 Bioware changed the gaming landscape with Baldur’s Gate, a Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventure.  Taking cues from second edition D&D and the many stories written about it, Bioware wrote a low level adventure that jammed everything they could find inside it.  They attempted to copy mage spells directly from the manual, and even added in famous characters like Drizzt.  It was exactly what the fans had been waiting for.  Not only were they able to see everything come to life, the game used the radical real time with pause system, allowing combat to flow far mo ..read more

The Ace Attorney games were an insane success, far beyond what Capcom could have predicted.  After 4 mainline games in the series though, it was time for something new, and creator Shu Takumi refused to do anything normal.  With a desire to explore characters in a far deeper way than was possible with Ace Attorney, he decided the only way to go about this was to have the main character be a ghost.   Whether that made sense or not, in 2010 we finally saw the release of Ghost Trick, a game that is so wrapped up in mystery that it's almost impossible to spoil all of its revel ..read more

Space Sims used to be a vibrant and well populated genre.  Back in the 90s they command shelf real estate, right next to the latest and greatest RTS and Point and Click Adventure games.  Coming at the tail end of this era was Tachyon: The Fringe, released in 2000 by Novalogic games, well known for their regular flight sims and the Delta Force series.  You play as Jake Logan, a freelancing mercenary, who quickly gets caught up in the midst of a fight for independence.  A megacorporation has been given the legal rights to mine on the Fringe, and you have to decide whether to ..read more

With another year done and dusted, Pat and James crack open another batch of listener questions.  After curveballs like Killer 7 and Deadly Premonition, these should be a breeze. Right..?  On this episode, we discuss: What are the best - and worst - smelling video game levels? Can you tell us the story of how y’all met and decided to start this podcast?  Was the fear of Baldur’s Gate 2 something you both developed as children?  Or did you just become cowards as grown men? We answer these questions and many more on Mailbag 6 of the Retro Spectives Podcast! - A huge shoutout ..read more

But can it run Crysis?  This was the motto that surrounded every single PC build for literal years after the release of the game in 2007.  Crytek were not satisfied with what they had achieved with Far Cry in 2004, and decided to push graphical hardware to its absolute limits with their brand new and shiny game.  And boy, did they succeed, with a poorly optimised but breathtakingly gorgeous game.  Even better, there was an entire video game attached to this graphical showcase, promising open ended tactical engagements over massive levels, far removed from corridor brawling ..read more

After their magnum opus that was Resident Evil 1, Capcom were not going to sit on their heels.  Coming out just two years after the first in 1998, Resident Evil 2 sought to have everything the original had and much, much more.  It connected its two character’s stories in far more meaningful ways, increased the size of each player's inventory (and their respectives arsenals) and had more cinematic and explosive moments to show the player. And boy did it do well!  It received universal critical acclaim, with everything from its graphical fidelity to its voice acting considered abo ..read more

The Legend of Zelda is perhaps the most iconic video game series of all time.  Boasting 19 mainline entries, and an endless swathe of critical acclaim and awards, it's hard to find someone who hasn’t at least heard of the action/adventure story of Link and Zelda.   It all began back in 1986 with the release of the first game for the Famicom in Japan.  The game begins immediately with an open ended structure, giving the player multiple paths to follow, and an open world to explore.  You explore and fight, get stronger and overcome challenges, and discover secrets along ..read more

System Shock 2 is considered by many to be the finest immersive sim ever made.  Released in 1999 in a coventure by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games, it sought to combine the classic 3D dungeon crawling of the original with pen and paper inspired RPG systems.  While resource management and exploration were still a key part of the experience, you were now restricted in what you could initially do by those RPG stats - and it was only towards the end game that your character would feel truly strong.  Perhaps most obvious were the changes from the more abstract environments ..read more

Over the years, we’ve played games from pretty much every genre under the sun, but there is one that is notably missing - the racing sim.  We’ve dabbled with arcade racers like Burnout 3, and have played several kart racers - Diddy Kong and F-Zero GX to name a couple.  But this is the first time we’re trying to learn how to actually drive a racing card under somewhat realistic conditions. And what better game to start with than the highly lauded Gran Turismo 4?  It boasts hundreds of hours of gameplay, and you’d be hard pressed to find a racing sim fan who hasn’t at least heard ..read more

Hitman: Blood Money, first released in 2006 by Eidos, is considered by many to be the best Hitman game ever made.  After the first few games played around with novel ideas and concepts to mixed success, Blood Money honed in on the formulae of specific, small and dense environments filled with ‘accidental’ scripted opportunities to murder your target.  Gone are the long and slow walking through the linear levels of Silent Assassin.  You no longer have the weird and confusing systems of Codename: 47, where you only sometimes had to think outside the box.  What we get here is ..read more