Fringe Busters

Back in the late '90s several attempts were made to bring the dying Adventure genre into the bright and shiny 3D era. Of course, the fidelity of 3D graphics weren't up to the task of replicating the beautiful 2D graphics of traditional adventure games. The worst offense, though, was that the puzzles were not up to snuff.

You're crouched in a concrete hallway, waiting for your enemy to show himself. This bunker is crawling with them and you know what you have to do. Your dual-pistols are prepared to rain a lead-filled death on the first person through that door. You know they deserve it--their oppressive regime has caused countless to suffer under the weight of their jackbooted heel.

I love to explore in games. It's one of the reasons I play video games—each new game is a new world to explore. If somebody took the exploration part of a game and stripped out all the other mechanics, I'd still enjoy it. Which is why I enjoyed Small Worlds so much.

Grappling Hook is a first-person puzzler which is shockingly based around the use of a grappling hook to reach the end of the level. That describes the high-level concept, which is as straightfoward as the name.