River Raid (1982)

River Raid

So I decided that today would be my first non-NES title, and the one that was the most requested was River Raid for the Atari 2600. So as I was looking to find the backstory, I finally found out (from reading the manual) that there is none; you are simply flying down the "River of No Return" trying to score as many points as you can. So as I started it up, I noticed a very large difference between this and the NES games I had been playing. So as I began, I immediately got the sense that I was playing a retro arcade game rather than one on a console. I could see certain elements of the game that have been taken and built upon in more modern games, especially games for the NES and XBLA/PSN. I would like to state before I start that I generally do not like arcade games, so that will have a pretty big effect on my impressions of this game.

What I Loved: There wasn't anything specific I loved about this game. I did like how the smoothly the difficulty changes as you progress through the river.

Everything you blow up gives you points

What I Hated: I just didn't like this game. I found it very repetitive and frankly, quite boring. There's no storyline or reason you're shooting you're way down a river, which is something that really bugs me when it comes to video games. I understand that the Atari hardware limits the amount of content you can put into the game, but because I grew up playing games that all had very interesting storylines, I want my games to have some form of a story. Another thing that annoyed me is that there is no end point; you simply keep flying and shooting until you run out of lives. This is because I enjoy being able to beat games, not having to beat myself. I simply lacked any sort of motivation to continue playing the game after my 3rd time through.

Flying over the fuel station refills your fuel

Overall Impression: It just couldn't hold my attention for more than 10 minutes. I can see how it inspired modern side scrollers, but appreciation could only take me so far. I found myself bored with the game after 10 minutes and wanting to go back to playing Contra. A large part of my dislike for this game is that I really did not appreciate it having no story or a reason for killing things. I'm fairly certain that my need for a story is a product of growing up on the Nintendo 64, where all of the games had a story of some sort. When I play games that lack any villain or goal to reach, it takes away the motivation for getting to the end. When I found out that there is no end, I lost all desire to play. There would be no self-gratification for beating a game if there is no ending. I can understand how it could have been very popular back then when there weren't many alternatives to play, but with the extent of games we have to choose from now, I just couldn't stop myself from playing Metroid instead.