Sore Thumbs: The best games you’ve never played Dan Woolsey
Welcome back! Sore Thumbs
has been away for a while, but it’s back in action now with myself at the helm.
After reading about the next 5 games, I guarantee you’ll be able to outsmart
your friends and impress members of the opposite sex, or I’ll gladly refund the
price you paid for this magazine.
Einhänder – PSX
The developer Square is best
known for their RPGs, but they also created a great shmup called Einhänder.
The story is actually fleshed out like you might expect from a Square game, but
who plays shmups for the story?
What
you really want is to be shooting things constantly, and on that, Einhänder delivers. The key gameplay
mechanic is that you can grab gun pods off of enemies after they blow up. You can
then align these weapons above or below you, allowing for different shot
angles.
Einhänder
combined nice visuals, fast action, interesting bosses, and great music and
sound to become one of the best shooters on the Playstation and of all time.
Average Online Price: $50.00
Demon Sword – NES
Long before games such as Assassin’s
Creed or Crackdown had you flying through the air with the greatest of
ease, Demon Sword was doing it in 8-bit style. The spiritual
successor to the less-forgiving Legend of Kage, Demon Sword tasks you with finding all six parts of your
demon-slaying sword, which have been scattered throughout the world.
The
opening level is actually my favorite part of the whole game. Rows of towering
bamboo trees let you leap huge distances all while swatting skeletons out of
the sky. At a time when people were used to a modest hop from their on-screen
heroes, Demon Sword instead offered
liberating movement and abilities. I’m pretty sure it was the box art that
scared people away from this game.
Average Online Price: $5.00
Toy Commander – DC
The ultimate in laziness, Toy
Commander is an acceptable way for you to play with toys, requiring
only your thumbs to do the heavy lifting. You could pilot toy planes, boats,
cars, and even a snail around various locations in your house.
Common
household items become tools or traps as you’re tasked with everything from
sinking submarines with pencil missiles to boiling eggs in a pot of water.
Wanna play in the litter box? Go for it! Need to see where the pipe in the
bathroom sink goes? Yeah, you can do that too! When you’re done exploring on
your own, invite your friends over to play with toys in split-screen
multiplayer. Toy Commander is a very
fun and imaginative game with surprising depth.
Average Online Price: $8.00
Noby Noby Boy – PS3
(Playstation Store)
This is a weird one. You
play as “Boy,” who seems to resemble a segment of rainbow-colored intestine
with legs and a face. Your quest is to ingest anything you see, allowing you to
grow longer. Your length, along with all the lengths of all other players in
the world, is then reported to “Girl.” She then grows longer until a new
planet/new level is discovered.
Of course, what goes in must come out. Eat more than you
can hold, and you’ll hear a lovely “pernt”
as an incoming item pushes another out of your backend. Stretch yourself too
far and you risk splitting in half, forcing you to then eat your own ass to
reconnect your halves. People will stare in amazement or ride on your back just
long enough for you to eat them.
Levels are created at random, and you can make new items
from combinations of things you’ve digested. For example, say you’ve just eaten
a group of safari explorers (stay with me), then you eat some bananas. After
you, ahem, expel these items, they
may just come back as safari banana-men.While
somewhat repetitive, the experience is all up to you and it’s definitely worth
trying out for $5.
Online Price (Playstation
Store): $5.00
Sniper Elite –
XBOX/PS2/PC
Without a doubt, Sniper
Elite is one of my favorite games. Set in war-torn Berlin,
you play as an OSS
sniper in WWII. Obviously, gameplay is focused on staying hidden and delivering
the one fatal shot needed to take out an enemy, then moving on before your
position is given away.
You
are able to use diversions such as the noise of an incoming explosion to mask
the sound of your shot and stay concealed. The AI can be a little too accurate
from two blocks away with a machine gun at times, but you just have to be
better than them.
One
great feature is the slow-motion bullet cam that kicks in when you fire that
perfect shot. Watch the devastation of your bullet as you follow its course up
to and through your enemy with gory wonderfulness (I’m talking skull
fragments). Think you’re a good shot? Try taking out a tank by shooting the gas
tank cap or eliminating three enemies with one bullet! If you don’t like being
a lone-wolf, have a friend join you in the fantastic split-screen coop mode.
Sniper Elite would be the game coming with me to that desert island you always
hear about.
Comments (
The developer Square is best
known for their RPGs, but they also created a great shmup called Einhänder.
The story is actually fleshed out like you might expect from a Square game, but
who plays shmups for the story?
Long before games such as Assassin’s
Creed or Crackdown had you flying through the air with the greatest of
ease, Demon Sword was doing it in 8-bit style. The spiritual
successor to the less-forgiving Legend of Kage, Demon Sword tasks you with finding all six parts of your
demon-slaying sword, which have been scattered throughout the world.
The ultimate in laziness, Toy
Commander is an acceptable way for you to play with toys, requiring
only your thumbs to do the heavy lifting. You could pilot toy planes, boats,
cars, and even a snail around various locations in your house.
This is a weird one. You
play as “Boy,” who seems to resemble a segment of rainbow-colored intestine
with legs and a face. Your quest is to ingest anything you see, allowing you to
grow longer. Your length, along with all the lengths of all other players in
the world, is then reported to “Girl.” She then grows longer until a new
planet/new level is discovered.
Without a doubt, Sniper
Elite is one of my favorite games. Set in war-torn 
