Freeware Adventure Review: La Croix Pan

La Croix Pan
By: The JBurger
This is an adventure game, usually I'd say to stay away if you're expecting a lot of action, but not only does this one feature a little bit of FPS gaming, it's also veeeery short. Short but good, if not fantastic. It's WWII (oh noez! Another World War II game!) you're the only solider left from your group and you have to secure the small town of La Croix Pan. As long as you don't fuck up along the way you do just that. Seeing as most of the people who read this probably won't take the chance and download this from the above link, I'll just tell you everything that happens. Of course if you DO want to play it then stop reading and download it now! It's very beautiful and honestly pretty fun.

New Project

"Wake Up. We're Here. Why are you shaking? Are you ok? Wake up. Stand up. There you go. You were dreaming. What's your name? Well, not even last night's storm could wake you. I heard them say we've reached Morrowind, I'm sure they'll let us go." - Jiub

I love Morrowind. It is one of my favorite games of all time. I love it so much that I want to write about it. So why don't i just write about it here? Because I wish to write about it excessively. Thus an entire new blog was born! Have you noticed this weird trend building recently where a gamer blogs their way through a game series? It started with Zelda, and other series like Ultima, Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy started getting blogged as well. Now I have my own contribution to the movement.

Blogging Morrowind

If you know anything about the game this is potentially a massive undertaking. How am I going to possibly go about this? I don't know. We'll let the nine guide us together on this journey.

Grindhouse (Spoilers Ahoy)

In order to fully enjoy this double feature you need to be in the right mood and mind set. First of all you need to be willing through two average length movies. This is strangely the most commonly heard complaint. It’s too long. I have to disagree. Not only are both movies worth seeing as long as you are a fan of Tarantino, but you’re paying for one movie. Who cares if it isn’t normality, I think of it as a good deal.

Ghost Rider (Movie)

And I had such high hopes for it. After the start of a good new monthly series (which is now dwindling already) and after buying the Road to Damnation mini for myself to enjoy I had high hopes for this movie. Of course it’s nigh impossible for a comic to become a movie without it failing. Boy did this one fail.

Obviously this movie wasn’t the worst thing ever; however, I’ll start with some highlights. Ghost Rider looks pretty damn good, especially after getting his real jacket in the jail scene; he reminds me of Spawn, which I’m overly fond of currently. The plot had an interesting basis. Besides the normal “You sold your soul” cliché, it adds a new demon trying to rise to power, along with his three elemental buddies; they search for an item of great dark magic. Of course, the movie ends up blundering and ruins the potential of these two aspects of the film as well. I can't even go one paragraph without mentioning something negative.

Majora's Mask

This is in my personal opinion the peak of Zelda games. Most people prefer to drool over Ocarina of Time, while it's a good game it's unpolished in my opinion. It is the last Zelda game (until Twilight Princess) to feature the "Normal Zelda Dungeon Progress System". Three starter dungeons, epic plot twist, seven more dungeons, and finally the climax. Majora's Mask was the turning point in the serious and the second Black Sheep. Many prefer to shun the teachings of Majora's Mask, while others except that it exists and only play it because it has the word Zelda in the title. Why?

Majora's Mask introduced a mature story, for a Zelda story at least. It's the end of the world in less than three days. If you don't do anything everything in Termina will die. This isn't Ganon pussy footing around claiming to take over by sitting on his arse all day at the top of his tower waiting for the Hero of Time to come and finish him off. This was the moon coming crashing down because of a poor kid possessed by a demonic mask. That's fucking wicked.

Contact (spoilers Contained Within)

Otherwise known as the biggest "almost". I got this game a while ago, and beat it soon after. I still play it from time to time, but only in short bursts as the game just doesn't live up to what it was supposed to be. Early in it's development many people, myself included, were led to believe this was a second coming of Earthbound. Since I missed the first coming I was hoping to jump on the chance to play one of the world's most quirky games. This game is rather quirky, but not always in a good way.

Marvel Zombies

Holy fuck, this was awesome. I'm on a total zombie binge right now, so I'm probably a little biased, but seriously. How can you not fucking love zombies?

I really liked the art style, faces always being heavily shadowed, and the design of most of the prominent zombies were awesome. You can really tell they put a lot of effort into the main characters. Sadly, you can also tell that they didn't care about any secondary characters that showed up. I mean being a "team book" of sorts that makes sense, and it's not like you can't ever tell who's who. Luckily it doesn't focus on them much anyway. Also, props for all the covers referencing older titles in the marvelverse.

Blue Valkyrie Needs Food Badly

Gauntlet is such an awesome series. I love dungeon-crawlers in general, but Gauntlet just does it right. From the original Gauntlet adventures, to it's first venture into 3D Legends, all the way to causing Seven Sorrows. The journey's Gauntlet games guide us on are never boring.

Sure, Seven Sorrows tried too hard to become an RPG and a fighter with it's buffed up exp. and "combo's" that were... pointless. It still had some fun. And I can concede that Dark Legacy was just a fleshed out version of Legends. At the end of the day though Dark Legacy is an amazing experience jam packed full of content for a group of dungeon delvers to explore. Legends is really the victim in this scenario. In theory it should still hold some merit, but after playing Dark Legacy it just feels pointless. It almost feels like a demo to the sequel, but I digress.

Rupee Land

Although many people don’t believe that Tingle is an important character in the Legend of Zelda mythos, they are wrong. Tingle was first introduced in Majora’s Mask, this was one of his lesser roles. All he did was give you maps for easily identifiable areas anyway. Though his next (console) escapade in The Wind Waker actually progressed the story. If Tingle hadn’t been around Link would never have gotten all of the Triforce shards he needed to beat Ganon. Sure his prices were rather high, but he’s cursed to collect rupees, what can he do?

Grandia II With A Side of Sonic

I hooked up my Dreamcast again just recently, so I've been playing two games that needed closure.

It started with Sonic Adventure. I hadn't been able to beat Big's story because I couldn't figure out how to do it exactly. So I gave it another go. Twenty minutes later Big's story is complete. Of course, I deleted my previous save file for the damn game, and now I must beat Tail's story, Knuckles' story, Amy's Story, and E-102 Beta's story. Pissed may I be, defeated I am not.