1001 Games To Play Before You Die: #0126 Thrust

Saturday, January 28, 2017

#0126 Thrust

Today I played Thrust. It was good... Yeah... It's fine...

Okay, so it's a gravity based SHMUP where you have to collect fule and energy pods for a galactic rebellion. Your ship is affected by gravity, momentum and inertia.

The game itself is fine. Controls are simple, physics are believable. It's just a nice fun arcade style game.

My real issue is the book praises is it as "One of the most important titles in the history of physics-based gaming" And... Why?

We've had physics based games since the 70s. 1979's Lunar Lander, which I reviewed here. And the almost identical, and I'd argue superior Gravitar from 1982 which I also reviewed here. If you're going to give credit for The Most Important Title in Physics-based Gaming, give it to Asteroids, they were the first to pioneer those types of thrust based controls.

Like I said before, the game is fine. It's just a Gravitar clone.

Next up: Space Harrier

No comments:

Post a Comment

Why I'm taking this challenge

So! I’ve spent nearly my entire life as a Nintendo Fanboy. A rabid fanboy to the point where when my family got a brand new Playstation 2 back in ‘02 (One of the best consoles ever). I refused to play it. I refused to have anything to do with the company that stole my beloved Nintendo’s thunder! This fanboyism ran rampant in my gaming life through high school and even when I moved out to live with the woman who would one day become my wife. I still didn’t play anything but Nintendo consoles. In fact, it wasn’t until we were gifted an Xbox 360 did I FINALLY play a game on a different console. That was Bioshock, it was also the first shooter I had ever played.It became one of my favorite games of all time. The rest is history, I’ve been playing games on any console I want now.

That’s all well and good, but this means that there is an entire other gaming WORLD that I’ve never played. Never experienced in my life. I love shooters, but with the exception of the half-life series, and System shock 2, every shooter from Doom all the way up until Bioshock, I’ve never played. Not Quake, not CoD, not battlefield.

So, since I’ve missed out on nearly 30 years of gaming, I decided to take a challenge. My lovely wife got me a book called 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die I am going to play through every game in this book. Starting with Oregon Trail (1971) and finish with Bioshock Infinite (2013) I plan to do at least one generation per year. At least. And to help me keep track of what I've done, I started doing small reviews of every game.

At first I wrote these in the starment.net forums, but eventually they became too lengthy to only be posted there, so I created this blog to not only help keep me organized, but so others can follow along as well. It won't be easy, but I think it's worth it to play games that I may otherwise never have played.