Sega Nerds

ATEI Show 2007 - Part 2 ‘Sega’s Worst’

Posted by Graham. Filed under Arcade, G, Review. Tagged with Exhibition/ Show.

 

{Sega went all out with advertising, as soon as you stepped outside you were greeted by a giant billboard advertising their new stand.  so big I couldn’t get the whole thing in a picture, this is just part of it.}

Foreword: One again I must apologise for the poor quality of any photos or videos shown.  I suck at photography.

Recently we announced that Seganerds (well just me) managed to make it to the ATEI show in London and gave a quick run down of the event and spoke of how Sega blew the competition out of the water with their stand.  We were set to give you more on the show sooner, I can only apologise for the delay, illness being a main factor for holding back. But I am sorry.  But now it gives me great pleasure to continue with highhlights of Segas stand at the ATEI show. 

From now on I shall be rating each arcade game in a few different catagories- just to give you fine people a better idea of the game.

Today we shall be exploring a few of the ‘less impressive’ games from Sega’s stand.  But have no fear, we shall be revealing the greatest games individually as we progress through the week.  So without further ado, I give you ‘Sega’s worst’ of ATEI 2007. Starting with the worst first.

SpongeBob Square Pants: 

Whta’s that you say?  A bad SpongeBob game?  Well actually this isn’t really much of a game.  And to be honest I didn’t play it.  But I do have a valid reason.  You have to put coins in it.  At the show nearly every game was freeplay.  In the Segastand they had two titles that you had to pay for and one of them was SpongeBob.  Now if this was an Arcade videogame I may have been tempted to fork out some coins.  But this wasn’t.  And I’m not even too sure what you had to do in it or what the purpose was.  From first glance you just put a coin in the slot and watch it roll through SpongeBob’s Pinapple house and onto the sea floor (bottom of the cabinet).  And by reading the games press release- I thnk that’s all you actually do!  The game is a ticket collecting game, “Your coin will land on SpongeBob or one of his friends for bubbly ticket action” -So in my eyes a waste of space and money.  Sorry Sega.

Scores:

Display Impression: 3.  Game Originality: 4.  Graphics: N/A.  Sounds: 7 (the music was quite fun) Playability: N/A (Did not play).   Funfactor: N/A (Did not play).  Overall Experience: 3

Should I find more information about this ‘game’, I will endeavour to post it up and let you all know.  Or if anyone has indeed played it- please do comment.

 

Extreme Hunting 2:

I have always been interested by the thought of hunting.  However I love animals far too much to be able to partake in killing them for game.  Should I be attacked, however, it would be a different story.  So the thought of killing unsuspecting computer generated animals brings a stirring in pants.

Unfortunately once I started playing this game, my stirring died down.  It’s really not as much fun as I had hoped.  First off the graphics do look quite lovely, screenshots don’t do it justice really.  But they aren’t overally impressive either, the ‘levels’ (hunting areas) are quite basic and ‘flat’ and the animals just run across the screen left and/or right and you cannot control the camera or any of your movements- a bit like House of the Dead, but less happening and less movement.

So what do you do?  Well you pick up the lovely shotgun in front of you, and choose your weapon from the in game menu.  Varying between rifles and shotguns.  Then you start playing, and you are presented with your rules -Shoot Adult wolves, do not shoot cubs. It’s always the same really, just don’t shoot any of the animals young,  If you do it is gameover for that round.  I found out the hard way.  When the level starts you usually have maybe 3 or 4 of your prey on screen, grazing, sleeping or walking slowly through the undergrowth.  You take your time, aim at your best target and fire.   As soon as your first shot goes off, the animals panic. And start to run faster.  They tend to run off screen in one direction, then a few seconds later run back the other way (very realistic)  And as they run you have to try and hit them, they tend to cross paths, or run in front of their young, so it can be a bit confusing at first. It’s round over when one of 3 things happen. 1- You shoot the wrong prey (i.e Younglings) 2- The animals run away forever- they don’t keep running back and forth until they are all dead, so you do have to be quick. 3- You run out of ammo- you don’t (usually) get reloads, so every shot counts.  The game then goes to a score screen, and you go directly onto the next round.

The problems I had with the game is how unrealistic it actually is.  I often went for the same target, until it fell.  I pumped 4 rounds into an Elk at one point and it kept running, and all the shots hit…..  It seems to take an animal down you have to hit certain points, one being the head.  Though often I did hit the head, and they still didn’t fall or get injured.  I wasn’t completely usless, I did take down a fair few of the pesky mammals, but the game just didn’t feel quite right. 

  

One level I did enjoy was the Bass level.  It is a bonus level and you get infinite ammo (though you still need to reload), and you basically shoot as many Bass as possible as they jump out of the water.  Great fun.  They should have made the game just on that I think.

The game is a bit more fun in two player, where you can play head to head or alternating.  And apparently there is also an Online mode- but I didn’t play that.

It wasn’t a terrible experience.  But I really doubt I would put much money into this game and I’m glad I didn’t have to at the show.

Display Impression: 6.  Game Originality: 8.  Graphics: 8.  Sounds: 6.  Playability: 5.   Funfactor: 6.  Overall Experience: 6.

For more information, screenshots and movies visit the game’s official website.

Note: -Now I did mention at the start that there were two of the Sega arcade games which you had to pay for.  And one of them was going to be put into this list of ‘worst games’.  But for the life of me I cannot remember what the game was called.  I thought I did take some pictures, but according to my camera, I did not.  But trust me it wasn’t that special and no one even took a second glance at the game.  It was a fighting game of some sort, but I didn’t play on it, and no one else did either, I took a look at it, but it didn’t seem very good.

Well there you have it the ‘Worst’ of Sega stand at the ATEI show. 2 (well 3) games out of some 16 titles on display!  You know what that means SegaNerds?  Yes that’s right.  I have a good 14 more titles to show you and I intend to do so throughout the next week!

Stay tuned.

~G~