February 10th:
Ordered some games and stuff online again. All new and sealed this time, nothing used/pre-owned/second.hand.
PlayStation 2:
Burnout Dominator (Platinum)
Stitch Experiment 626
Operation Air Assault 2
Amiibo:
Fox (Super Smash Bros.)
Peach (Super Mario Collection)
Zero Suit Samus (Super Smash Bros.)
Disney Infinity:
Jasmine (2.0)
February 11th:
Ordered some additional games from the same place. All new, all sealed, nothing used/pre-owned/second-hand.
PlayStation 2:
Kart Racer
MotorStorm Arctic Edge
Truck Racer
February 16th:
Was out shopping with a friend today and found some Disney Infinity on sale half price off, also some other bargain bin stuff.
Disney Infinity:
Disgust (3.0, Inside Out)
Minnie Mouse (3.0)
Mulan (3.0)
Quorra (3.0, Tron Legacy)
Sadness (3.0, Inside Out)
Bluray+DVD:
The Croods
PC:
Trust optical mouse
Other:
cable splitter components
February 23rd:
Was out shopping today, picked up some collectibles.
DVD:
Prince of Persia Sands of Time
Collectibles:
Welly - Back to the Future - 1985 DeLorean DMC-12 Time Machine
Bamse figure pack - Granny, Sooty and the house mouse
Disney's Cars 2 - Shigeko
Disney's Cars 2 - Suki
February 24th:
Placed an order online for some stuff.
Hardware:
a Sega Mega Drive II console
a Sega Mega CD II console add-on
a Sega 32X console add-on
a RetroPad 6-button Mega Drive controller
Mega Drive:
Steel Talons
Winter Challenge
Game Boy Advance:
Sega Arcade Gallery (Afterburner, Space Harrier, OutRun and Super Hang On)
PlayStation:
O.D.T. Escape Or Die Trying
PlayStation 2:
Dead or Alive 2 (promo)
Mercury Meltdown Remix
Transformers (the 2004 game based on the animated Transformers Armada series)
Worms 3D
WRC3
February 25th:
Placed another order online for some other stuff.
Hardware:
three replacement glass screens for Game Boy Advance
three Wormlights for Game Boy Advance
two extension cables for PlayStation/PlayStation 2 controllers
an S-Video cable for Xbox 360
a VGA to S-Video and composite RCA converter (NOT a signal converter like I thought it was, just a simple connector converter, the graphics card needs to have S-Video/composite signal over VGA for this thing to work or the image is scrambled and won't show properly on S-Video/composite compatible devices like TVs or projectors, bummer for me as I was hoping to play my PC games on my TV with a controller rather than on the PC monitor as always)
February 25th:
While not a gaming purchase exactly I still like to include little things like this because there are plenty of games related to it, especially in this case with the thing being both LEGO and Star Wars.
LEGO:
LEGO Star Wars magazine with limited edition Millennium Falcon set
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Now Playing - February 2016
Some recent purchases dominate the playlist at the moment.
Offroad Extreme (Wii)
A game released on PlayStation 2 in Europe by infamous publisherPhoenix Games, the Wii port offers as far as I know the same game only with forced motion controls.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster of epic proportions, right? Yes, yes it most certainly does, but alas it's a moderately entertaining racer and the motion controls are honestly pretty good, they're responsive and do what they need without complications.
I usually hate motion controls but in select few games I can tolerate them depending on how detrimental they are to the game. In this game I felt they were minimally detrimental, so kudos for that.
It's hard to tell if this was better on PS2 using normal controls without having played it myself, but I had little to no problems winning races and staying on track even when maneuvering through tricky thin mountainside roads where you could easily fall off the side down bottomless pits having to reset to the track costing precious seconds.
Hell, there are plenty of games I have problems staying on the road in even with normal controls let alone in other motion controlled atrocities, yet somehow this super low budget port of a PS2 Phoenix Games release manages to pull it off rather nicely. Colour me vaguely impressed, I guess.
It falls short in other apartments, of course, the visuals for example are rather unimpressive even by early Dreamcast and PS2 standards. They might've been passable as good on the generation before that but it's a budget game so I won't tear it a new one for such shallow reasons.
It has some minor bugs as well, like glitching through or getting stuck in the scenery, nothing major as you'll reset back on track and get back in the race fairly quickly, but it can become annoying if it happens frequently, say during moment when the AI gangs up on you.
There is one thing the game does that baffles me though, in the Time Trial mode it doesn't save your lap times or ghosts, so everytime you go back to beat your old times they've all been reset to 0 and the ghost is nowhere to be found.
On PS2 this would've been bad enough seeing as memory cards were pretty much an industry standard at that point, but on Wii they added the internal memory, and the game saves other progress like money earned and what you've unlocked, so clearly they knew how to program an autosave feature! I started writing down my lap times on sticky notes I put on the inside of the game box, old school style, because of this.
It's not something I would say ruins the entire game, it's a minor inconvenience I doubt most people will care that much about anyway, but it could've easily been fixed and personally I care a lot more about that in racing games than any championship or career mode, so it's a shame.
The game's been panned and scored pretty low by online reviewers (IGN gave it a 1/10) and youtubers alike, but I feel it deserves better than that, it simply isn't that bad, I'd give it a genuine "good" rating, say 3-3.5/5. I'm having fun playing it, I like the tracks and the gameplay is good enough to keep me entertained.
You have a damage bar and repair pickups so offensive and defensive gameplay styles matter, there are nitro pickups as well as speed strips for extra speed and it's even playable in 2 player split screen, which is more than can be said about most racing games these days having singleplayer and online modes only.
So in conclusion I've been positively surprised by this game, it had everything going against it being a good game but somehow I'm having fun with it. I even paid a pretty hefty price for it, 11 dollars and 59 cents apparently (roughly converted to US dollars using xe.com).
A youtube video mentioned they had purchased it for just a couple of dollars brand new, so I really overpaid for a second hand copy when compared to that. I wouldn't say I overpaid though, I was fully willing to pay the asking price and I feel got my money's worth, it made me dust off my Wii after several months of neglect after all.
Ridge Racer Unbounded (PlayStation 3)
I'm disappointed in more ways that I can express in words. It's a game from a series I expected more from and it's by a developer I expected more from.
It's got an unstable framerate, there's only one car and one track to use and the unlocking is brutal and made specifically to be drawn out, slow, grinding, tedious and arbitrarily difficult, there are tons of load times and they all feel longer than general for the same kind of things in other games, the controls are pretty bad and have little to no options for change, the AI is cheating, overly perfect and brutal, there's no multiplayer at all (it has singleplayer and an online mode but from what I've read it never took off and had severe issues that didn't get patched for ages, I don't do online so I can't report on the current state of it) and the custom mode where you get to put together your own track still doesn't have anything more to use than what is unlocked in singleplayer, so again only one car and parts of one track are available.
It's a shame all these issues break the game so completely as it also has some stuff other games in the series lack, like track destruction somewhat similar to Split/Second and MotorStorm Apocalypse.
It also has nice visuals overall, it's just too bad the framerate isn't able to show them properly.
Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots (PlayStation 3)
I'm not a fan of the series in general but some of them have been alright; the original on PSX, Portable Ops and Peace Walker on PSP and Ground Zeroes on 360 all had their moments.
I didn't really like 2 and 3 at all and I haven't had the opportunity to give Phantom Pain a go yet, from what I've seen from Let's Plays however it doesn't look like I'd enjoy it, so I'm not in any rush to play it.
I'm rather indifferent toward the GameCube remake of the original, Twin Snakes or whatever it was called, I haven't had much exposure to it in later years so my memories of it have faded.
4 holds up well though, for such an early PS3 game the only technical complaint I have are the many low res textures.
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Won some more races in the career mode.
LEGO Drome Racers (Game Boy Advance)
Truck Racer (PlayStation 2)
A budget game published by Nordic Games where you drive different types of trucks, like a semi, a pickup, a monster truck, a fire engine, a hummer and even a van, so it's at least varied in the types of vehicles you get to drive, almost a little like MotorStorm or something.
I like it, the framerate isn't super solid but it hasn't dipped too low, it seems to at least be able to stay above the 25fps mark, which is perfectly playable.
I like the handling of the cars, you can do some nice powerslides and the turbo is very similar the one you have in MotorStorm where you use it as you please and it fills back up, though in this game you don't explode after using it all up, it just refills again like normal.
Visually it's not too bad, you have real time damage on the cars and they all have enough detail to at least look like what they're suppose to be even if some textures are low res and stuff like trees and other background object are copied and pasted a lot.
I like the way you unlock new trucks and tracks, you actually get to manually pick what you want to unlock, then you get a challenge for it, for trucks you have to use the truck you want unlocked against a similar truck and win in a one on one race to unlock it, as for new tracks you need to beat a set time trial, you get infinite laps to do it but unless you've unlocked a suitable truck first it can be very hard to get around the track fast enough. I'm not a fan of stuff being locked away in racing games to begin with and even less so when there are no cheat codes to unlock everything with either, but I can be merciful in my judgement if the game at least makes up for it somehow, and I feel this game made unlocking stuff enough of my choice as a player that it's not a big deal. If I want a specific track or truck I can race for it without having to go through some arbitrary championship or something similar like so many other racing games force the player to do, here it's just go for it and get your reward for the work you put it, it's more direct, less diluted, and I welcome that. Games like Gran Turismo, Forza, MotorStorm, Ridge Racer and the like could learn a lot from games like this. Not bad for a little budget title, not bad at all.
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Been playing a lot of new games lately so decided to replay the classic Super Mario Bros. trilogy on Entertainment System.
F1 World Championship (Mega Drive)
I love old games with 3D graphics so I've been playing a lot of different games on [mostly] Mega Drive that had flat-shaded polygon or other types of early 3D graphics.
Newman Haas IndyCar Featuring Nigel Mansell (Mega Drive)
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge (Mega Drive)
Sega Sports Formula One World Championship Beyond The Limit (Mega CD)
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker (Mega Drive)
Thunder Blade (PC Engine)
Super Thunder Blade (Mega Drive)
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Gunship (PlayStation)
Also been playing a lot of old helicopter games.
Sega Arcade Gallery (Game Boy Advance)
I'm only playing Space Harrier in this, I was never a big fan of Hang On, OutRun or Afterburner.
Offroad Extreme (Wii)
A game released on PlayStation 2 in Europe by infamous publisherPhoenix Games, the Wii port offers as far as I know the same game only with forced motion controls.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster of epic proportions, right? Yes, yes it most certainly does, but alas it's a moderately entertaining racer and the motion controls are honestly pretty good, they're responsive and do what they need without complications.
I usually hate motion controls but in select few games I can tolerate them depending on how detrimental they are to the game. In this game I felt they were minimally detrimental, so kudos for that.
It's hard to tell if this was better on PS2 using normal controls without having played it myself, but I had little to no problems winning races and staying on track even when maneuvering through tricky thin mountainside roads where you could easily fall off the side down bottomless pits having to reset to the track costing precious seconds.
Hell, there are plenty of games I have problems staying on the road in even with normal controls let alone in other motion controlled atrocities, yet somehow this super low budget port of a PS2 Phoenix Games release manages to pull it off rather nicely. Colour me vaguely impressed, I guess.
It falls short in other apartments, of course, the visuals for example are rather unimpressive even by early Dreamcast and PS2 standards. They might've been passable as good on the generation before that but it's a budget game so I won't tear it a new one for such shallow reasons.
It has some minor bugs as well, like glitching through or getting stuck in the scenery, nothing major as you'll reset back on track and get back in the race fairly quickly, but it can become annoying if it happens frequently, say during moment when the AI gangs up on you.
There is one thing the game does that baffles me though, in the Time Trial mode it doesn't save your lap times or ghosts, so everytime you go back to beat your old times they've all been reset to 0 and the ghost is nowhere to be found.
On PS2 this would've been bad enough seeing as memory cards were pretty much an industry standard at that point, but on Wii they added the internal memory, and the game saves other progress like money earned and what you've unlocked, so clearly they knew how to program an autosave feature! I started writing down my lap times on sticky notes I put on the inside of the game box, old school style, because of this.
It's not something I would say ruins the entire game, it's a minor inconvenience I doubt most people will care that much about anyway, but it could've easily been fixed and personally I care a lot more about that in racing games than any championship or career mode, so it's a shame.
The game's been panned and scored pretty low by online reviewers (IGN gave it a 1/10) and youtubers alike, but I feel it deserves better than that, it simply isn't that bad, I'd give it a genuine "good" rating, say 3-3.5/5. I'm having fun playing it, I like the tracks and the gameplay is good enough to keep me entertained.
You have a damage bar and repair pickups so offensive and defensive gameplay styles matter, there are nitro pickups as well as speed strips for extra speed and it's even playable in 2 player split screen, which is more than can be said about most racing games these days having singleplayer and online modes only.
So in conclusion I've been positively surprised by this game, it had everything going against it being a good game but somehow I'm having fun with it. I even paid a pretty hefty price for it, 11 dollars and 59 cents apparently (roughly converted to US dollars using xe.com).
A youtube video mentioned they had purchased it for just a couple of dollars brand new, so I really overpaid for a second hand copy when compared to that. I wouldn't say I overpaid though, I was fully willing to pay the asking price and I feel got my money's worth, it made me dust off my Wii after several months of neglect after all.
Ridge Racer Unbounded (PlayStation 3)
I'm disappointed in more ways that I can express in words. It's a game from a series I expected more from and it's by a developer I expected more from.
It's got an unstable framerate, there's only one car and one track to use and the unlocking is brutal and made specifically to be drawn out, slow, grinding, tedious and arbitrarily difficult, there are tons of load times and they all feel longer than general for the same kind of things in other games, the controls are pretty bad and have little to no options for change, the AI is cheating, overly perfect and brutal, there's no multiplayer at all (it has singleplayer and an online mode but from what I've read it never took off and had severe issues that didn't get patched for ages, I don't do online so I can't report on the current state of it) and the custom mode where you get to put together your own track still doesn't have anything more to use than what is unlocked in singleplayer, so again only one car and parts of one track are available.
It's a shame all these issues break the game so completely as it also has some stuff other games in the series lack, like track destruction somewhat similar to Split/Second and MotorStorm Apocalypse.
It also has nice visuals overall, it's just too bad the framerate isn't able to show them properly.
Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots (PlayStation 3)
I'm not a fan of the series in general but some of them have been alright; the original on PSX, Portable Ops and Peace Walker on PSP and Ground Zeroes on 360 all had their moments.
I didn't really like 2 and 3 at all and I haven't had the opportunity to give Phantom Pain a go yet, from what I've seen from Let's Plays however it doesn't look like I'd enjoy it, so I'm not in any rush to play it.
I'm rather indifferent toward the GameCube remake of the original, Twin Snakes or whatever it was called, I haven't had much exposure to it in later years so my memories of it have faded.
4 holds up well though, for such an early PS3 game the only technical complaint I have are the many low res textures.
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Won some more races in the career mode.
LEGO Drome Racers (Game Boy Advance)
Truck Racer (PlayStation 2)
A budget game published by Nordic Games where you drive different types of trucks, like a semi, a pickup, a monster truck, a fire engine, a hummer and even a van, so it's at least varied in the types of vehicles you get to drive, almost a little like MotorStorm or something.
I like it, the framerate isn't super solid but it hasn't dipped too low, it seems to at least be able to stay above the 25fps mark, which is perfectly playable.
I like the handling of the cars, you can do some nice powerslides and the turbo is very similar the one you have in MotorStorm where you use it as you please and it fills back up, though in this game you don't explode after using it all up, it just refills again like normal.
Visually it's not too bad, you have real time damage on the cars and they all have enough detail to at least look like what they're suppose to be even if some textures are low res and stuff like trees and other background object are copied and pasted a lot.
I like the way you unlock new trucks and tracks, you actually get to manually pick what you want to unlock, then you get a challenge for it, for trucks you have to use the truck you want unlocked against a similar truck and win in a one on one race to unlock it, as for new tracks you need to beat a set time trial, you get infinite laps to do it but unless you've unlocked a suitable truck first it can be very hard to get around the track fast enough. I'm not a fan of stuff being locked away in racing games to begin with and even less so when there are no cheat codes to unlock everything with either, but I can be merciful in my judgement if the game at least makes up for it somehow, and I feel this game made unlocking stuff enough of my choice as a player that it's not a big deal. If I want a specific track or truck I can race for it without having to go through some arbitrary championship or something similar like so many other racing games force the player to do, here it's just go for it and get your reward for the work you put it, it's more direct, less diluted, and I welcome that. Games like Gran Turismo, Forza, MotorStorm, Ridge Racer and the like could learn a lot from games like this. Not bad for a little budget title, not bad at all.
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. 2 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Been playing a lot of new games lately so decided to replay the classic Super Mario Bros. trilogy on Entertainment System.
F1 World Championship (Mega Drive)
I love old games with 3D graphics so I've been playing a lot of different games on [mostly] Mega Drive that had flat-shaded polygon or other types of early 3D graphics.
Newman Haas IndyCar Featuring Nigel Mansell (Mega Drive)
Kawasaki Superbike Challenge (Mega Drive)
Sega Sports Formula One World Championship Beyond The Limit (Mega CD)
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker (Mega Drive)
Thunder Blade (PC Engine)
Super Thunder Blade (Mega Drive)
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Gunship (PlayStation)
Also been playing a lot of old helicopter games.
Sega Arcade Gallery (Game Boy Advance)
I'm only playing Space Harrier in this, I was never a big fan of Hang On, OutRun or Afterburner.
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