December 5th:
me and a friend went to a secondhand shop where I found an old Action Force (EU G.I. Joe) comic from 1989 comic and after we had some pizza we went to a movie store where I picked up the Lego Batman Movie on DVD
DVD:
The Lego Batman Movie (2017)
Comics:
Action Force (1989)
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December 10th:
Finally the USB speakers I ordered a couple weeks ago arrived, despite their very expensive shipping costs they didn't even send the order until a week and they sent me the wrong information in the email so I couldn't log into their site and check the status of my order and the package they sent had nothing to secure it, it was just cardboard wrapped once around it with a string, it's a miracle it came through without major injury, I'm never ordering anything from BRL again.
PC Hardware:
2x USB Speakers Boynq The Vase
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December 12th:
A shopping trip resulted in some on-sale Lego game finds from GameStop and some cheap DVD finds from another store.
3DS:
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (pre-owned but complete and in mint condition)
PlayStation Vita:
Lego Marvel Avengers (new)
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (new)
DVD:
Julkalendern 1990 - Kurt Olssons Jul
Lego DC Comics Super Heroes - Justice League Vs. Bizarro League
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 1 - Littlest Pets, Big Adventures
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 2 - Lights, Camera, Mongoose!
Littlest Pet Shop Vol. 3 - Sweetest Pets
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December 19th:
A quick visit to a second hand shop resulted in some nice finds today.
GameCube:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
PlayStation 2:
Barbie as The Island Princess
Crash of the Titans (promo)
DVD:
Aliens in the Attic
The Ricky Gervais Show - The Complete First Series
Lotus Lantern (Region 3 NTSC)
Kentucky Fried Movie
Disney's Beauty & The Beast - 2 disc Special Edition
South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut
Madagascar 3 (new and factory sealed)
The Legend of Korra - Book 3 - Change
Cloudy with a chance for Meatballs
Agent Freddie
Batman Returns
Batman & Robin
Monty Python's A Liar's Autobiography
Comics:
Min Häst
Garfield special
The Phantom
Agent X9
Stål Kalle
Toys:
Micro Machines
Super Mario Bros. McDonald's figures - Mario and Toad
Lego Catwoman mask
a cream white medium-large SAAB plastic model car, older model from the 70s or 80s, not sure
Other:
Minnie Mouse painting
Snow White painting
wooden figure - sitting body-less lady
CD:
Dynamite Dance
Books:
cat books
two small humor books
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December 21th:
Another quick visit to a second hand shop resulted in some more nice finds today.
Mega Drive:
F1 World Championship Edition
LHX Attack Chopper
Super Monaco GP
Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike
PlayStation 3:
Assassin's Creed
Assassin's Creed II
Assassin's Creed Brotherhood
Dead Space
F.E.A.R. First Encounter Assault Recon
PC:
Asterix & Obelix XXL2 Mission Las Vegum
Portable LCD game:
Brick Game 9999-games-in-1 (blue)
DVD:
10000BC
Other:
Sleeping Beauty wooden tablet
Spanish Dancing Ladies, three, yellow clothes, one in original box, one big and one regular medium size
porcelain bikini pigs, three small, one big piggy bank
pink geisha dancing lady
a couple of small art frames
and I found a couple of movies during a quick stop at a movie shop
DVD:
The Smurfs The Lost Village
Bluray:
Storks
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December 22nd:
a trip to the mall didn't result in any new games today, I almost bought one for PSP but when I saw the line to the register I said nah, I can buy this some other time if they still have it then, I did get some other stuff though
Stuff:
a mobile phone 3,5mm headphone jack LED light to work as a strong extra light when taking photos
a Barbie superhero frog girl, it was so weird I had to buy it, I couldn't leave the store without owning it
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Princess Luna figure
three small Mega Bloks Hot Wheels sets (Chromad, Turbo Nitro Booster and Sting Shot)
two Hot Wheels, one of which was a white Lotus Esprit S1, like the one James Bond had in one of the movies that turned into a submarine in James Bond 007 The Spy Who Loved Me, and a Ford Shelby GR-1 Concept (black with green stripe)
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December 24th:
Today I only got one gift worth mentioning, a Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 7-pack of little mouser robots, I always loved those in the original cartoon but I never got the toys they had back then, so even though I don't like the Nickelodeon reboot of the show I still love that we gota second chance at getting some mouser toys.
Good Yule!
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Now Playing - December 2017
Remember Me (Xbox 360)
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
Alien Storm (Mega Drive)
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
The Story of Thor A Successor of the Light (Mega Drive)
Justice League Task Force (Mega Drive)
A fun fighting game with some cool moves, some very nice visual effects and a fantastic soundtrack. Batman and Wonder Woman especially are a lot of fun to play as in this.
Justice League Task Force (Super Nintendo)
Basically a bad alternative to the vastly superior Mega Drive game, with uglier and simpler visuals, unresponsive controls that require specific timing to do what the AI can do instantly (cheating bastards), less content with some gameplay modes and options being absent entirely, no proper intro sequence and no cutscenes between fights in the story mode, and finally either boring and awful unfitting music for a fighting game with horrible ear piercing noises pretending to be instruments or no music at all with just boring ambient sounds, it's an awful game and should be completely avoided at all costs, go for the Mega Drive game instead and have a great time because you sure won't have one if you play this terrible Super Nintendo version.
Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
My relatively new third-party Retro-Bit 6-button controller broke while I was playing this, it's only a year or two old now but the top part of the d-pad broke straight off, the plastic that connected it in the middle underneath had given in, I glued it back and hopefully it'll hold like that for a while but once broken it's a permanent weak spot so we'll see how many games I can play before it eventually breaks again..
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Ok so a couple days later the controller broke again and this time I tried to drill a hole through it to reinforce it with a metal screw down the middle, while also gluing it, and so far it's holding up, but I fear the plastic just isn't good enough to last very long regardless, it's a cheaply made controller, plain and simple.
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 (Xbox 360)
Just making some custom characters, my OC Farideh, Lara Croft and Bonnie Rockwaller.
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (3DS)
Pretty good, not exactly a step up from all the other Lego games over the last decade and a half, quite literally exactly on the same level more than anything, but I guess it's what we've all come to expect at this point.
The one positive thing to note about this specific version is that they actually have realtime stencil shadows, a bit pixelated, but they're there, which is pretty impressive for a 3DS game.
Not even the port of Lego Star Wars II The Original Trilogy on PSP had that back in the day despite PSP being notably more powerful than 3DS, however, textures are far lower resolution with some very blurry ones in some places and the framerate is not as smooth or as stable.
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
I wasn't sure if picking the emotionally distant girl over the aggressive girl was a good choice, but turns out it was, she was actually really sweet and had a magic doll made to remind her of me because she missed me so much
Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
I haven't played this in many years now, I never completed it back then and I probably won't this time either, but every step along the way counts, maybe some day I will have completed some of my now many Lego games.
I've gotten a lot farther now though, unlocked tons of new stuff and completed almost all of the Hero missions 100%, just a few things missing here and there where I need specific supervillains to do certain things in the levels to get the remaining stuff.
It's a very good game and I'm enjoying it a lot, so much in fact I've been looking into getting the two sequels, DC Superheroes and Beyond Gotham, for Xbox 360 or maybe PS3. I tried the demos for both on Xbox 360, downloaded from Xbox Live, and I really enjoyed them so I doubt I'd regret getting either or both of them in full version, sadly they're a bit pricey and hard to find, DC Superheroes has been available only once but it sold out again and that was only the PS3 version, so I'll have to keep an eye out.
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Unimpressive, sadly. I haven't played for long but already I have a list of complaints that shouldn't have made it into the final version of the game.
The camera is no longer static and panning over areas nicely all the time making for a good solid experience from beginning to end, like in most other Lego games, instead it's far too often switched to a third person camera with some basic manual control, the problem is that it's way too zoomed in making it very hard to navigate the environment, there's also an insane amounts of up-close and personal pop-up, especially NPCs walking around, they will literally pop-up out of nowhere right next to your character, out of nowhere, and a lot of the time several NPCs will do this as the same time, like two or three of them just suddenly appear next to you as you bump into them, slowing you down in the process.
It's like they're just teleporting around like in Star Trek, but with a severe case of ADHD. It looks worse than anything else I've ever seen in regards to pop-up in videogames, far worse.
The controls are a complete waste of Vita features, the d-pad, left analog stick and touch screen all do the same thing, control your character's movement, with the analog stick doing the best job of the three and the touch screen being almost unusable as it can't turn properly, it moves forward or backward only and very poorly to the left and right, it's completely unbalanced. The touch pad on the back does nothing.
The shoulder buttons and right analog stick both control the camera, moving it left and right only, up and down on the right analog stick does nothing.
I haven't played far enough into the game to say how the controls are different when it changes modes to flying spaceships and such yet.
The minigames are overly simplistic, making the originals they're based on, like Space Invaders and Zaxxon, seem far more modern and complex by comparison.
When you get to play the action sequences with a classic Lego game static camera angle the game picks up and is much better and more fun to play.
Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
Compared to Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens this is even more of a mixed bag, while some problems that game had have been made better, some are still there and a whole list of brand new ones have been added.
The audio first of all is really poor, the voice acting sounds like it's been recorded from an old radio with an old mix onto cassette tape and then played back and recorded onto computer with a cheap headset mic. It's really bad, dare I say even worse than Remember Me? Yes, yes I do, it's worse than Remember Me, and a lot worse at that as it encompasses the entire cast of characters throughout the entire games it seems, I haven't completed it but so far it's all bad, and I'm several hours in.
The big difference is that this game has an open world where you can free roam, a chunk of New York and a carrier ship.
There are side quests and challenges scattered about and you can jump into vehicles and destroy stuff for Lego studs, the universal currency of all modern Lego games.
The controls are about identical to the previous mentioned game, with all the same shortcomings.
Visually it's a step up and a step down depending on how you see it, the characters don't animate their faces during in-game cutscenes, I don't remember now if they did or not in Force Awakens but I want to say they did. There seems to be a bit more detail and special effects present, but it's had to compare.
Overall I think I like this one a little bit more than Force Awakens, but because I don't like marvel and their characters much, nor do I like Disney's take on Star Wars, it's safe to say I'm not a huge fan of either of these two games, they're okay when the focus is on them being Lego games but when story and characters and such come into play they both drop in quality and so does my interest and patience.
Virtua Racing (Mega Drive)
Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike (Mega Drive)
Arguably the best of the original 8- and 16-bit generation Strike games and a great helicopter action game. I still prefer Red Zone, Steel Talons and LHX Attack chopper from the 16-bit generation and the Strike games on PlayStation, Saturn, N64 and PC though.
It's nice that they have on-foot missions and different helicopters to pick from during missions, I don't remember if you had that in the previous Strike games, regardless, good stuff.
F1 World Championship Edition (1993) (Mega Drive)
A great F1 game with some fast speed, scaling 2D graphics and polygonal 3D graphics.
It plays very well, it's good and responsive, if you crash into stuff you can sometimes keep going without coming to a complete stop, this was pretty rare back in the day for racing games as a vast majority would force you to see a crash animation or wait until the car or bike or whatever reset to the track before you could drive again, it still happens in this game but mostly for things that are too high to drive over, like sign posts and trees, but for all the shorter objects including the opponent cars you can hit them and get back to driving again without a full crash and reset, it has good control and handling too so for the most part you can avoid crashing altogether, there are lots of tracks to race on and it even has a turbo mode where some of the graphics are scaled down so the game can run at twice the framerate making an already fast and smooth game even faster and smoother.
F1 World Championship Edition (1995) (Mega Drive)
Same name but slightly different game, it also boasts fast speed, scaling 2D graphics, polygonal 3D graphics and lots of tracks to race on, however, it lacks a turbo mode but adds a third person camera instead so you can see your car while you race, it also has many layers of parallax scrolling for the sky and backgrounds and it has a lot more polygonal 3D objects around the tracks.
It doesn't play quite as well as it doesn't have the minor crash physics, just the regular stop and reset to track style, but it does have good controls and handling and is fast and responsive, so you won't be crashing much anyway and it still feels very good to play.
Overall I think both games are fantastic and impressive racing games for the Mega Drive, you can't go wrong with either.
I personally prefer having a third person view so this game is my favorite of the two for that reason alone, but in all other ways they are overall equals, where one is better in one way, the other is better in another way.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
Back in the day when PS2 launched I got mine with Armored Core 2 and Zone of the Enders as my two first games of the launch lineup available, a couple of weeks later I also got my first PS2 memory card, after some time I had saved up enough to buy more games, the third game I got was Shadow of Memories, after that however I was give the option to wish for a new game that winter, and I had narrowed down my options to two games Jet Ion GP and New York Race, after much consideration I picked Jet Ion GP, thinking I'll probably get NYR not that long after. I enjoyed Jet Ion GP a lot and it remains a classic for me but I never got NYR, not until now, in December of 2017, I had only tried it on PC back in the mid 00's and liked it but I never found a copy on sale again until I now finally ordered it online. It's very nice to finally own a copy of my own and it's a good game, I would've loved to have this back then but things turned out like this and I'll have to try and enjoy it now instead, far after the hype of the brand new PS2 has long gone died off and I can only enjoy games based on how good they are objectively, no added new generation factor giving it a push.
I can gladly say though this is a very good game and I'm enjoying it pretty much as if it was new to me back then, I can usually mentally put myself back in those days and kind of forcefully add the excitement of what it was like had I played it back when it was originally released for games in general, it's not exactly like the real experience but as close as it can get, I've had plenty of practise with games for Mega Drive and other older systems over years and it's been a blast. Great games don't really age, it's just our perception of what games are like that does, thankfully I play enough old games that I can easily keep my mind fully open to older titles and enjoy them as they would've been enjoyed back when they were new, as it should be.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)
Score International Baja 1000 World Championship Off Road Racing (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre game, completely locked down with all content painstakingly unlockable one thing at a time, the bad controls making it almost unplayable and very far from even remotely enjoyable.
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
Alien Storm (Mega Drive)
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
The Story of Thor A Successor of the Light (Mega Drive)
Justice League Task Force (Mega Drive)
A fun fighting game with some cool moves, some very nice visual effects and a fantastic soundtrack. Batman and Wonder Woman especially are a lot of fun to play as in this.
Justice League Task Force (Super Nintendo)
Basically a bad alternative to the vastly superior Mega Drive game, with uglier and simpler visuals, unresponsive controls that require specific timing to do what the AI can do instantly (cheating bastards), less content with some gameplay modes and options being absent entirely, no proper intro sequence and no cutscenes between fights in the story mode, and finally either boring and awful unfitting music for a fighting game with horrible ear piercing noises pretending to be instruments or no music at all with just boring ambient sounds, it's an awful game and should be completely avoided at all costs, go for the Mega Drive game instead and have a great time because you sure won't have one if you play this terrible Super Nintendo version.
Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
My relatively new third-party Retro-Bit 6-button controller broke while I was playing this, it's only a year or two old now but the top part of the d-pad broke straight off, the plastic that connected it in the middle underneath had given in, I glued it back and hopefully it'll hold like that for a while but once broken it's a permanent weak spot so we'll see how many games I can play before it eventually breaks again..
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
Ok so a couple days later the controller broke again and this time I tried to drill a hole through it to reinforce it with a metal screw down the middle, while also gluing it, and so far it's holding up, but I fear the plastic just isn't good enough to last very long regardless, it's a cheaply made controller, plain and simple.
WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2007 (Xbox 360)
Just making some custom characters, my OC Farideh, Lara Croft and Bonnie Rockwaller.
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (3DS)
Pretty good, not exactly a step up from all the other Lego games over the last decade and a half, quite literally exactly on the same level more than anything, but I guess it's what we've all come to expect at this point.
The one positive thing to note about this specific version is that they actually have realtime stencil shadows, a bit pixelated, but they're there, which is pretty impressive for a 3DS game.
Not even the port of Lego Star Wars II The Original Trilogy on PSP had that back in the day despite PSP being notably more powerful than 3DS, however, textures are far lower resolution with some very blurry ones in some places and the framerate is not as smooth or as stable.
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
I wasn't sure if picking the emotionally distant girl over the aggressive girl was a good choice, but turns out it was, she was actually really sweet and had a magic doll made to remind her of me because she missed me so much
Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
I haven't played this in many years now, I never completed it back then and I probably won't this time either, but every step along the way counts, maybe some day I will have completed some of my now many Lego games.
I've gotten a lot farther now though, unlocked tons of new stuff and completed almost all of the Hero missions 100%, just a few things missing here and there where I need specific supervillains to do certain things in the levels to get the remaining stuff.
It's a very good game and I'm enjoying it a lot, so much in fact I've been looking into getting the two sequels, DC Superheroes and Beyond Gotham, for Xbox 360 or maybe PS3. I tried the demos for both on Xbox 360, downloaded from Xbox Live, and I really enjoyed them so I doubt I'd regret getting either or both of them in full version, sadly they're a bit pricey and hard to find, DC Superheroes has been available only once but it sold out again and that was only the PS3 version, so I'll have to keep an eye out.
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Unimpressive, sadly. I haven't played for long but already I have a list of complaints that shouldn't have made it into the final version of the game.
The camera is no longer static and panning over areas nicely all the time making for a good solid experience from beginning to end, like in most other Lego games, instead it's far too often switched to a third person camera with some basic manual control, the problem is that it's way too zoomed in making it very hard to navigate the environment, there's also an insane amounts of up-close and personal pop-up, especially NPCs walking around, they will literally pop-up out of nowhere right next to your character, out of nowhere, and a lot of the time several NPCs will do this as the same time, like two or three of them just suddenly appear next to you as you bump into them, slowing you down in the process.
It's like they're just teleporting around like in Star Trek, but with a severe case of ADHD. It looks worse than anything else I've ever seen in regards to pop-up in videogames, far worse.
The controls are a complete waste of Vita features, the d-pad, left analog stick and touch screen all do the same thing, control your character's movement, with the analog stick doing the best job of the three and the touch screen being almost unusable as it can't turn properly, it moves forward or backward only and very poorly to the left and right, it's completely unbalanced. The touch pad on the back does nothing.
The shoulder buttons and right analog stick both control the camera, moving it left and right only, up and down on the right analog stick does nothing.
I haven't played far enough into the game to say how the controls are different when it changes modes to flying spaceships and such yet.
The minigames are overly simplistic, making the originals they're based on, like Space Invaders and Zaxxon, seem far more modern and complex by comparison.
When you get to play the action sequences with a classic Lego game static camera angle the game picks up and is much better and more fun to play.
Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
Compared to Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens this is even more of a mixed bag, while some problems that game had have been made better, some are still there and a whole list of brand new ones have been added.
The audio first of all is really poor, the voice acting sounds like it's been recorded from an old radio with an old mix onto cassette tape and then played back and recorded onto computer with a cheap headset mic. It's really bad, dare I say even worse than Remember Me? Yes, yes I do, it's worse than Remember Me, and a lot worse at that as it encompasses the entire cast of characters throughout the entire games it seems, I haven't completed it but so far it's all bad, and I'm several hours in.
The big difference is that this game has an open world where you can free roam, a chunk of New York and a carrier ship.
There are side quests and challenges scattered about and you can jump into vehicles and destroy stuff for Lego studs, the universal currency of all modern Lego games.
The controls are about identical to the previous mentioned game, with all the same shortcomings.
Visually it's a step up and a step down depending on how you see it, the characters don't animate their faces during in-game cutscenes, I don't remember now if they did or not in Force Awakens but I want to say they did. There seems to be a bit more detail and special effects present, but it's had to compare.
Overall I think I like this one a little bit more than Force Awakens, but because I don't like marvel and their characters much, nor do I like Disney's take on Star Wars, it's safe to say I'm not a huge fan of either of these two games, they're okay when the focus is on them being Lego games but when story and characters and such come into play they both drop in quality and so does my interest and patience.
Virtua Racing (Mega Drive)
Urban Strike The Sequel To Jungle Strike (Mega Drive)
Arguably the best of the original 8- and 16-bit generation Strike games and a great helicopter action game. I still prefer Red Zone, Steel Talons and LHX Attack chopper from the 16-bit generation and the Strike games on PlayStation, Saturn, N64 and PC though.
It's nice that they have on-foot missions and different helicopters to pick from during missions, I don't remember if you had that in the previous Strike games, regardless, good stuff.
F1 World Championship Edition (1993) (Mega Drive)
A great F1 game with some fast speed, scaling 2D graphics and polygonal 3D graphics.
It plays very well, it's good and responsive, if you crash into stuff you can sometimes keep going without coming to a complete stop, this was pretty rare back in the day for racing games as a vast majority would force you to see a crash animation or wait until the car or bike or whatever reset to the track before you could drive again, it still happens in this game but mostly for things that are too high to drive over, like sign posts and trees, but for all the shorter objects including the opponent cars you can hit them and get back to driving again without a full crash and reset, it has good control and handling too so for the most part you can avoid crashing altogether, there are lots of tracks to race on and it even has a turbo mode where some of the graphics are scaled down so the game can run at twice the framerate making an already fast and smooth game even faster and smoother.
F1 World Championship Edition (1995) (Mega Drive)
Same name but slightly different game, it also boasts fast speed, scaling 2D graphics, polygonal 3D graphics and lots of tracks to race on, however, it lacks a turbo mode but adds a third person camera instead so you can see your car while you race, it also has many layers of parallax scrolling for the sky and backgrounds and it has a lot more polygonal 3D objects around the tracks.
It doesn't play quite as well as it doesn't have the minor crash physics, just the regular stop and reset to track style, but it does have good controls and handling and is fast and responsive, so you won't be crashing much anyway and it still feels very good to play.
Overall I think both games are fantastic and impressive racing games for the Mega Drive, you can't go wrong with either.
I personally prefer having a third person view so this game is my favorite of the two for that reason alone, but in all other ways they are overall equals, where one is better in one way, the other is better in another way.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
Back in the day when PS2 launched I got mine with Armored Core 2 and Zone of the Enders as my two first games of the launch lineup available, a couple of weeks later I also got my first PS2 memory card, after some time I had saved up enough to buy more games, the third game I got was Shadow of Memories, after that however I was give the option to wish for a new game that winter, and I had narrowed down my options to two games Jet Ion GP and New York Race, after much consideration I picked Jet Ion GP, thinking I'll probably get NYR not that long after. I enjoyed Jet Ion GP a lot and it remains a classic for me but I never got NYR, not until now, in December of 2017, I had only tried it on PC back in the mid 00's and liked it but I never found a copy on sale again until I now finally ordered it online. It's very nice to finally own a copy of my own and it's a good game, I would've loved to have this back then but things turned out like this and I'll have to try and enjoy it now instead, far after the hype of the brand new PS2 has long gone died off and I can only enjoy games based on how good they are objectively, no added new generation factor giving it a push.
I can gladly say though this is a very good game and I'm enjoying it pretty much as if it was new to me back then, I can usually mentally put myself back in those days and kind of forcefully add the excitement of what it was like had I played it back when it was originally released for games in general, it's not exactly like the real experience but as close as it can get, I've had plenty of practise with games for Mega Drive and other older systems over years and it's been a blast. Great games don't really age, it's just our perception of what games are like that does, thankfully I play enough old games that I can easily keep my mind fully open to older titles and enjoy them as they would've been enjoyed back when they were new, as it should be.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)
Score International Baja 1000 World Championship Off Road Racing (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre game, completely locked down with all content painstakingly unlockable one thing at a time, the bad controls making it almost unplayable and very far from even remotely enjoyable.
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Gaming Purchases - November 2017
November 16th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in a Buzz game for PS2, some DVDs, an old Babar book and a few bags of Hot Wheels.
PlayStation 2:
Buzz! The Mega Quiz
Cartoon DVDs:
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
THe Hunchback of Notre Dame (Noble Entertainment)
Superman (1941)
Books:
Télé-Babar (1969)
Other:
Hot Wheels
other various toy cars
Lego:
Ninjago magazine + hovercraft polybag set
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 24th:
A trip to the local GameStop resulted in a new Vita game today, also got some other stuff in some other places, like some new shoes, a Lego magazine and candy.
PlayStation Vita:
Gal*Gun Double Peace
Lego:
Nexo Knights magazine + Macy Halbert minifigure
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 28th:
Some second hand finds.
DS:
Littlest Pet Shop Garden
PC:
LEGO Rock Raiders
PC Hardware:
USB numeric keypad
CD:
Citycat's pure dance music tv-cd citycat club essential dance traxx attention 1997
Dance Trance 94
Sonic Dance (1994, 1996 Norwegian edition)
DVD:
Pippi Långstrump
Starzinger Vol. 1
Starzinger Vol. 3
Starzinger Vol. 4
Starzinger Vol. 5
Books:
Garfield Julalbum 2008
Babar Pianisten
Heidi
Kon
Marsupilami 3
Marsupilami 6
Cartoon Network klassiker (Jesons, Flinta, Scooby Doo, Huckleberry Hund, Tom & Jerry)
Pomperipossa
Toys:
Batgirl McDonald's figure (2016)
Daphne Blake action figure
Knuckles The Echidna classic 90s McDonald's figure
Other:
Kasta Gris
Plockepinn
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in a Buzz game for PS2, some DVDs, an old Babar book and a few bags of Hot Wheels.
PlayStation 2:
Buzz! The Mega Quiz
Cartoon DVDs:
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
THe Hunchback of Notre Dame (Noble Entertainment)
Superman (1941)
Books:
Télé-Babar (1969)
Other:
Hot Wheels
other various toy cars
Lego:
Ninjago magazine + hovercraft polybag set
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 24th:
A trip to the local GameStop resulted in a new Vita game today, also got some other stuff in some other places, like some new shoes, a Lego magazine and candy.
PlayStation Vita:
Gal*Gun Double Peace
Lego:
Nexo Knights magazine + Macy Halbert minifigure
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 28th:
Some second hand finds.
DS:
Littlest Pet Shop Garden
PC:
LEGO Rock Raiders
PC Hardware:
USB numeric keypad
CD:
Citycat's pure dance music tv-cd citycat club essential dance traxx attention 1997
Dance Trance 94
Sonic Dance (1994, 1996 Norwegian edition)
DVD:
Pippi Långstrump
Starzinger Vol. 1
Starzinger Vol. 3
Starzinger Vol. 4
Starzinger Vol. 5
Books:
Garfield Julalbum 2008
Babar Pianisten
Heidi
Kon
Marsupilami 3
Marsupilami 6
Cartoon Network klassiker (Jesons, Flinta, Scooby Doo, Huckleberry Hund, Tom & Jerry)
Pomperipossa
Toys:
Batgirl McDonald's figure (2016)
Daphne Blake action figure
Knuckles The Echidna classic 90s McDonald's figure
Other:
Kasta Gris
Plockepinn
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Now Playing - November 2017
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Sonic R (PC)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive, played on 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
Baja Edge of Control (Xbox 360)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360)
Shadow The Hedgehog (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox 360)
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
Finally got hold of a Gal*Gun game, it's definitely a game with my kind of humor, I like it already. Too bad there's no instruction manual in the box, it's all digital only.
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
pet collecting and minigames aimed toward children, an extremely typical DS game in every way imaginable, mostly touch screen controls, a couple of minigames that are more puzzle focused can be enjoyable for a bit but overall it's nothing I'd recommend to anyone outside of the targeted little girl demographic
Remember Me (Xbox 360)
It looks pretty good with lots of detailed visuals and such but it also looks very cluttered making it hard to see stuff, especially early in the game in the slums where you have piles of garbage and scattered trash all over the place, the combat is sluggish and annoying relying on combos with a really poor timing system that's really hard to get a good feel for, I've managed to get it down enough that I can get through a fight relatively unscaved but it's clunky at best, the audio quality is downright some of the worst I've heard in modern times, more often than not literally sounding like the game takes place in a wooden box streamed over internet radio from the late 90s to an internet modded Mega Drive, yeah if you've played any 16-bit version of Street Fighter 2 you already know exactly what this game's voice compression quality sounds like, it's full of annoying real time info stuff and intrusive tutorials that pop up during gameplay or pause the gameplay entirely forcing you to do other stuff before you can continue doing what you were actually doing, frequently taking you out of the experience and breaking what little immersion there might have been otherwise, the camera is awful with slow control, glitchy and jerky movement as if it doesn't update the camera in real time or something and it's constantly switching between the normal (barely) controllable view and static camera angles for platforming segments and "cinematic" moments, I say that in quotation marks as it's literally just parts of the level where it forced you to walk and no other inputs work while some music plays as you're suppose to take in the visual impressions of the graphics they made, it's as shallow as it gets and because it's done so poorly it fails to have the impact it could've had if only someone with artistic and cinematic expertise had been in charge instead of the janitor or possibly a son or daughter of one of the programmers, clearly no person with any kind of knowledge on how to direct cinematic scenes ever came close to working on this game, the level design is confusing and awkward, especially in combination with the cluttered visuals and bad camera and the game has glitches, lots of glitches, sometimes the characters during cutscenes will freak out like Silent Hill monsters, twitching, turning and spassing out all over the place in the most unnatural ways possible.
Oh, there's no proper instruction booklet in the box either, just a thin pamphlet thing, so they didn't even manage that properly.
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Sonic R (PC)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive, played on 3DS via SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
Baja Edge of Control (Xbox 360)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360)
Shadow The Hedgehog (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)
Race PRO (Xbox 360)
Tomb Raider Legend (Xbox 360)
Gal*Gun Double Peace (PlayStation Vita)
Finally got hold of a Gal*Gun game, it's definitely a game with my kind of humor, I like it already. Too bad there's no instruction manual in the box, it's all digital only.
Littlest Pet Shop Garden (DS)
pet collecting and minigames aimed toward children, an extremely typical DS game in every way imaginable, mostly touch screen controls, a couple of minigames that are more puzzle focused can be enjoyable for a bit but overall it's nothing I'd recommend to anyone outside of the targeted little girl demographic
Remember Me (Xbox 360)
It looks pretty good with lots of detailed visuals and such but it also looks very cluttered making it hard to see stuff, especially early in the game in the slums where you have piles of garbage and scattered trash all over the place, the combat is sluggish and annoying relying on combos with a really poor timing system that's really hard to get a good feel for, I've managed to get it down enough that I can get through a fight relatively unscaved but it's clunky at best, the audio quality is downright some of the worst I've heard in modern times, more often than not literally sounding like the game takes place in a wooden box streamed over internet radio from the late 90s to an internet modded Mega Drive, yeah if you've played any 16-bit version of Street Fighter 2 you already know exactly what this game's voice compression quality sounds like, it's full of annoying real time info stuff and intrusive tutorials that pop up during gameplay or pause the gameplay entirely forcing you to do other stuff before you can continue doing what you were actually doing, frequently taking you out of the experience and breaking what little immersion there might have been otherwise, the camera is awful with slow control, glitchy and jerky movement as if it doesn't update the camera in real time or something and it's constantly switching between the normal (barely) controllable view and static camera angles for platforming segments and "cinematic" moments, I say that in quotation marks as it's literally just parts of the level where it forced you to walk and no other inputs work while some music plays as you're suppose to take in the visual impressions of the graphics they made, it's as shallow as it gets and because it's done so poorly it fails to have the impact it could've had if only someone with artistic and cinematic expertise had been in charge instead of the janitor or possibly a son or daughter of one of the programmers, clearly no person with any kind of knowledge on how to direct cinematic scenes ever came close to working on this game, the level design is confusing and awkward, especially in combination with the cluttered visuals and bad camera and the game has glitches, lots of glitches, sometimes the characters during cutscenes will freak out like Silent Hill monsters, twitching, turning and spassing out all over the place in the most unnatural ways possible.
Oh, there's no proper instruction booklet in the box either, just a thin pamphlet thing, so they didn't even manage that properly.
Friday, October 13, 2017
Gaming Purchases - Oktober 2017
Oktober 10th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in some DVDs and other random things today.
Manga DVD:
Silver Fang Vol. 1
Stories from the Island World
Cartoon DVD:
An American Tail - Fievel Goes West
Batman - The Man Behind The Mask - Season 1 - Vol. 2
My Little Pony Tales - Vol. 6
SamSam Vol. 2
SamSam Vol. 3
The Swan Princess - A Royal Family Tale
Tintin Vol. 19
Tintin and the Guerilla Vol. 21
Tintin in the Shark Lake
Books:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
Comics:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 12th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.
PC:
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap I Kvadrat
Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Gustaf (Garfield)
Herman Hedning
Sonic The Hedgehog #2 1991
(I'll add more later, need to organize more first)
Other:
a 3,5mm male to composite female adapter
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Oktober 13th:
Found some random stuff while out shopping today.
Magazines:
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic with My Little Pony The Movie figures Princess Skystar and Tempest
Other:
Fidget Spinners of various different designs (the notable ones were two red metallic ones and a green one with LEDs)
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Oktober 19th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.
PC:
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2
Cartoon DVD:
Cinderella (Kids Planet, not Disney)
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
Fievel The Mystery of the Night Monster
Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Ernie
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 25th:
A small shopping trip today resulted in some fun finds, no secondhand stuff today.
Cartoon DVD:
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses
Barbie The Data Game Hero
Monster High Double Adventure
Monster High Silence! Action! Vampire action!
Sing
DVD:
Arrival
Bluray:
Arrival
Kinder Eggs:
a Despicable Me 3 figure of one of the three girls doing some kind of spinning karate move or possibly a spinning dance move
some kind of bowling game with a lion that shoots into some point cards
a small red car with three pieces of road that if you collect the rest of the set you can eventually build a little toy race track
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in some DVDs and other random things today.
Manga DVD:
Silver Fang Vol. 1
Stories from the Island World
Cartoon DVD:
An American Tail - Fievel Goes West
Batman - The Man Behind The Mask - Season 1 - Vol. 2
My Little Pony Tales - Vol. 6
SamSam Vol. 2
SamSam Vol. 3
The Swan Princess - A Royal Family Tale
Tintin Vol. 19
Tintin and the Guerilla Vol. 21
Tintin in the Shark Lake
Books:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
Comics:
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 12th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.
PC:
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap I Kvadrat
Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Gustaf (Garfield)
Herman Hedning
Sonic The Hedgehog #2 1991
(I'll add more later, need to organize more first)
Other:
a 3,5mm male to composite female adapter
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 13th:
Found some random stuff while out shopping today.
Magazines:
My Little Pony Friendship is Magic with My Little Pony The Movie figures Princess Skystar and Tempest
Other:
Fidget Spinners of various different designs (the notable ones were two red metallic ones and a green one with LEDs)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 19th:
A visit to a local secondhand shop resulted in many comics and a PC game today.
PC:
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2
Cartoon DVD:
Cinderella (Kids Planet, not Disney)
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
Fievel The Mystery of the Night Monster
Comics:
Penny
Min Häst
Ernie
(I'll add them later, need to organize first)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oktober 25th:
A small shopping trip today resulted in some fun finds, no secondhand stuff today.
Cartoon DVD:
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses
Barbie The Data Game Hero
Monster High Double Adventure
Monster High Silence! Action! Vampire action!
Sing
DVD:
Arrival
Bluray:
Arrival
Kinder Eggs:
a Despicable Me 3 figure of one of the three girls doing some kind of spinning karate move or possibly a spinning dance move
some kind of bowling game with a lion that shoots into some point cards
a small red car with three pieces of road that if you collect the rest of the set you can eventually build a little toy race track
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Now Playing - Oktober 2017
September is over so I will dial down the 32 extravaganza a bit and focus on horror themed games and monster games instead, still with an underlying 32-bit focus though.
Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!
Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.
Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.
Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Jersey Devil (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)
Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)
Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!
Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.
Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.
Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Now Playing - September 2017
It's my 32nd birthday this month and the 20th anniversary of lots of PlayStation related stuff, I got my PlayStation and my first PlayStation game in 1997, many of my top favorite games of all time came out in 1997 (some in late 96 and as a result they didn't get played until 97) and it's also the 30th anniversary for some really old games like Maze Hunter 3-D on Master System and the legendary R-Type.
I'll mostly focus my playtime on as many of the games from 97 as possible this months to truly celebrate as any gamer in this situation should.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
WORMS (PC)
Wanted to play some old school Worms.
LIERO (PC)
Wanted to play some Liero.
Tenkai Knights Brave Battle (3DS)
got this game as a birthday gift, it's not very good but it has semi-customizable Lego brick-esque transformer robot mech suits, so it's not all bad
Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System, played on 3DS as part of the SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
drinking Red Bull for authentic improved reaction speed
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
it may be a 1998 release but it's far too good not to play
R-Type (Master System)
R-Type (PC Engine)
R-Type (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type II (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type II (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type Delta (PlayStation)
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Auto Destruct (PlayStation)
Command & Conquer (PlayStation)
the first PlayStation game I ever owned
Exhumed (PlayStation)
Ghost in the Shell (PlayStation)
Grand Theft Auto (PlayStation)
Disney's Actionspel med Herkules (PlayStation)
JumpingFlash!2 (PlayStation)
Killer Loop (PlayStation)
Metal Slug (PlayStation)
Oddworld Abe's Oddysee (PlayStation)
Overboard! (PlayStation)
Pandemonium 2 (PlayStation)
Porsche Challenge (PlayStation)
Rage Racer (PlayStation)
RayStorm (PlayStation)
ReLoaded (PlayStation)
SoulBlade (PlayStation)
Spider (PlayStation)
Star Wars Rebel Assault II The Hidden Empire (PlayStation)
WarCraft II The Dark Saga (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
finally got around to play this, it's okay so far, starting with a painfully long and unskippable intro sequence then introducing the painfully annoying and unnecessarily large cast of main characters in the form of way too much annoying text based dialog has made it a very slow game to get rolling, but I like the buggy driving and monster battles, the excavating of fossils is a shitty touch screen tapping minigame but it's at least over fairly quickly and not that hard to do (so far), it's an okay looking game for the system, the monsters have nice bumpmaps, or possible normalmaps, on them, it's hard to tell exactly but it's some kind of sub texture map that adds additional visual detail, which is nice, it's also very bright and colorful and plays smoothly, so it's far from a bad game, it's not exactly close to a good game yet but it's okay overall, I hope it will get better once the gameplay starts to take center stage over all this forced tutorial/introductory story garbage, also the humor is pretty juvenile, a "joke" they've already repeated multiple times, believe it or not, is that the fat kid is so fat he literally rolls around if he falls over, and he's a bumbling idiot who trips and falls over a lot, yeah it's not well written, it's very poor indeed, the gameplay is the saving grace of this game so far, to say the very least
I'll mostly focus my playtime on as many of the games from 97 as possible this months to truly celebrate as any gamer in this situation should.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
WORMS (PC)
Wanted to play some old school Worms.
LIERO (PC)
Wanted to play some Liero.
Tenkai Knights Brave Battle (3DS)
got this game as a birthday gift, it's not very good but it has semi-customizable Lego brick-esque transformer robot mech suits, so it's not all bad
Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System, played on 3DS as part of the SEGA 3D Classics Collection)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation)
WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)
drinking Red Bull for authentic improved reaction speed
S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
it may be a 1998 release but it's far too good not to play
R-Type (Master System)
R-Type (PC Engine)
R-Type (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type II (Game Boy, part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type II (Game Boy Color, played on Game Boy Advance as part of the R-Type DX cartridge)
R-Type Delta (PlayStation)
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Auto Destruct (PlayStation)
Command & Conquer (PlayStation)
the first PlayStation game I ever owned
Exhumed (PlayStation)
Ghost in the Shell (PlayStation)
Grand Theft Auto (PlayStation)
Disney's Actionspel med Herkules (PlayStation)
JumpingFlash!2 (PlayStation)
Killer Loop (PlayStation)
Metal Slug (PlayStation)
Oddworld Abe's Oddysee (PlayStation)
Overboard! (PlayStation)
Pandemonium 2 (PlayStation)
Porsche Challenge (PlayStation)
Rage Racer (PlayStation)
RayStorm (PlayStation)
ReLoaded (PlayStation)
SoulBlade (PlayStation)
Spider (PlayStation)
Star Wars Rebel Assault II The Hidden Empire (PlayStation)
WarCraft II The Dark Saga (PlayStation)
Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)
finally got around to play this, it's okay so far, starting with a painfully long and unskippable intro sequence then introducing the painfully annoying and unnecessarily large cast of main characters in the form of way too much annoying text based dialog has made it a very slow game to get rolling, but I like the buggy driving and monster battles, the excavating of fossils is a shitty touch screen tapping minigame but it's at least over fairly quickly and not that hard to do (so far), it's an okay looking game for the system, the monsters have nice bumpmaps, or possible normalmaps, on them, it's hard to tell exactly but it's some kind of sub texture map that adds additional visual detail, which is nice, it's also very bright and colorful and plays smoothly, so it's far from a bad game, it's not exactly close to a good game yet but it's okay overall, I hope it will get better once the gameplay starts to take center stage over all this forced tutorial/introductory story garbage, also the humor is pretty juvenile, a "joke" they've already repeated multiple times, believe it or not, is that the fat kid is so fat he literally rolls around if he falls over, and he's a bumbling idiot who trips and falls over a lot, yeah it's not well written, it's very poor indeed, the gameplay is the saving grace of this game so far, to say the very least
Monday, September 4, 2017
Gaming Purchases - September 2017
September 5th:
It's my 32nd birthday, finally I reach the original PlayStation's 32-bit generation age! (trust me, it's a VERY big deal to a gamer).
No second-hand stuff this time, just brand new things all across the board.
3DS:
Tenkai Knights Brave Battle
PlayStation 3 accessories:
2x Bluetooth headset
USB headset
PlayStation Vita accessories:
Smart Case
Disney Infinity:
Helen Parr/Elastigirl
LEGO Star Wars:
Jawa Sandcrawler polybag
Nanoblock:
Blue Whale Skeleton
Dinonix
Human Skeleton
Pteranodon
Stegosaurus
Triceratops
Tyrannosaurus Skeleton
Space Station
Nanoblock+:
Hello Kitty - Kitty's House
Hello Kitty - Yacht
Other Notable Gifts:
2x buckets of cotton candy
4x Red Bull energy drinks (to drink while playing WipEout 2097 for authentically increased reaction speed)
4x Milka chocolate bars
I also took a trip to a local second-hand shop and found some additional goodies.
PlayStation 2:
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Hugo CannonCruise
Kart Racer
Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
Midnight Club
The Simpsons Game
Comics:
Scooby-Doo!
Manga Pocket:
Chobits Vol. 1
Inu-Yasha Vol. 9
Inu-Yasha Vol. 24
Kemono To Chat Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 2
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 3
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 4
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 5
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 6
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 7
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 8
Tokyo Mew Mew Vol. 2
XXX-Holic Vol. 13
ことばの学習 (Language learning) まんがで覚・える (Remember by comic) 反対語・同意語 (Autonym and Psynonym)
(ことばの学習 まんがで覚・える 反対語・同意語 The opposite words and synonyms that you can remember in the language learning manga)
(反対語・同意語 まんがで覚・える ことばの学習 Learning words that can be memorized in opposite words / synonymous comic books)
Manga DVD:
Pompoko
School Rumble Collection - Vol. 1-6 (6 DVD Box Set)
DVD:
Kirikou Og Trollkvinnen (norwegian edition of the original 1998 Kirikou animated movie)
The Muppet Show - Series 1 (4 DVD Box Set)
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September 13th:
Went second-hand shopping today, found some stuff.
DVD:
Cube
Planet 51
Comics:
Archie
Ducktales
Garfield
Scooby-Doo!
Tarzan
Tom & Jerry
Books:
Barbie
Beverloo
Disney's Aladdin
Disney's Aristocats
Other:
Hot Wheels Monster Jam Grave Digger
Hot Wheels Monster Jam El Toro Loco
a very long legged doll
a shoebox of assorted Lego
It's my 32nd birthday, finally I reach the original PlayStation's 32-bit generation age! (trust me, it's a VERY big deal to a gamer).
No second-hand stuff this time, just brand new things all across the board.
3DS:
Tenkai Knights Brave Battle
PlayStation 3 accessories:
2x Bluetooth headset
USB headset
PlayStation Vita accessories:
Smart Case
Disney Infinity:
Helen Parr/Elastigirl
LEGO Star Wars:
Jawa Sandcrawler polybag
Nanoblock:
Blue Whale Skeleton
Dinonix
Human Skeleton
Pteranodon
Stegosaurus
Triceratops
Tyrannosaurus Skeleton
Space Station
Nanoblock+:
Hello Kitty - Kitty's House
Hello Kitty - Yacht
Other Notable Gifts:
2x buckets of cotton candy
4x Red Bull energy drinks (to drink while playing WipEout 2097 for authentically increased reaction speed)
4x Milka chocolate bars
I also took a trip to a local second-hand shop and found some additional goodies.
PlayStation 2:
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Hugo CannonCruise
Kart Racer
Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
Midnight Club
The Simpsons Game
Comics:
Scooby-Doo!
Manga Pocket:
Chobits Vol. 1
Inu-Yasha Vol. 9
Inu-Yasha Vol. 24
Kemono To Chat Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 2
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 3
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 4
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 5
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 6
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 7
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 8
Tokyo Mew Mew Vol. 2
XXX-Holic Vol. 13
ことばの学習 (Language learning) まんがで覚・える (Remember by comic) 反対語・同意語 (Autonym and Psynonym)
(ことばの学習 まんがで覚・える 反対語・同意語 The opposite words and synonyms that you can remember in the language learning manga)
(反対語・同意語 まんがで覚・える ことばの学習 Learning words that can be memorized in opposite words / synonymous comic books)
Manga DVD:
Pompoko
School Rumble Collection - Vol. 1-6 (6 DVD Box Set)
DVD:
Kirikou Og Trollkvinnen (norwegian edition of the original 1998 Kirikou animated movie)
The Muppet Show - Series 1 (4 DVD Box Set)
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September 13th:
Went second-hand shopping today, found some stuff.
DVD:
Cube
Planet 51
Comics:
Archie
Ducktales
Garfield
Scooby-Doo!
Tarzan
Tom & Jerry
Books:
Barbie
Beverloo
Disney's Aladdin
Disney's Aristocats
Other:
Hot Wheels Monster Jam Grave Digger
Hot Wheels Monster Jam El Toro Loco
a very long legged doll
a shoebox of assorted Lego
Sunday, August 27, 2017
Non-Gaming Purchases - Augusti 2017
Since I haven't bought any directly gaming related purchases this month I'll just add some other stuff I got instead.
a bunch of fidget spinners in various colors
several LEGO sets from the Nexo Knights series and DC Super Hero Girls series:
2x LEGO Nexo Knights 70326 Black Knight Mech
2x LEGO Nexo Knights 70349 Ruina's Lock & Roller
LEGO Nexo Knights 70363 Battle Suit Macy
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41230 Batgirl Batjet Chase
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41233 Lashina Tank
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41234 Bumblebee Helicopter
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41235 Wonder Woman Dorm
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41237 Batgirl Secret Bunker
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41239 Eclipso Dark Palace
a bunch of fidget spinners in various colors
several LEGO sets from the Nexo Knights series and DC Super Hero Girls series:
2x LEGO Nexo Knights 70326 Black Knight Mech
2x LEGO Nexo Knights 70349 Ruina's Lock & Roller
LEGO Nexo Knights 70363 Battle Suit Macy
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41230 Batgirl Batjet Chase
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41233 Lashina Tank
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41234 Bumblebee Helicopter
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41235 Wonder Woman Dorm
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41237 Batgirl Secret Bunker
LEGO DC Super Hero Girls 41239 Eclipso Dark Palace
Tuesday, August 1, 2017
Now Playing - Augusti 2017
More 3DS and other portable stuff mainly this months as my TV remains broken.
Star Fox 64 3D (3DS)
It's a good remake of the Nintendo 64 game Lylat Wars, with a good visual upgrade and everything else kept very intact, the controls are fine and it plays smoothly, the biggest complaint for me is that it's too much like the original Lylat Wars in that they've added virtually nothing new beside the better visual quality, for example they could've easily added a cleaned up, high-res, smooth high framerate and stereoscopic 3D enhanced version of the original StarWing, as they never released the original Super Nintendo game as a port to the Game Boy Advance like the fans cried out for for so many years, sure there was the superior third-party game on GBA called Star X which had far better visuals and that played with a nice, high and smooth framerate than StarWing, but without the Nintendo brand recognition it sadly never become more than a hidden gem.
Star Fox 64 3D is still a good game if you can find it cheap enough, I got the Nintendo Selects version which is like a Platinum, Essentials or Classics type of cheaper re-release, so it can thankfully be found for an acceptable price these days for those who are interested.
UPDATE August 3rd
Beat it around 17:40 using no continues, it's short and easy but it has multiple paths to play through so it's got replay value for multiple playthroughs.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
A European exclusive that has many similarities to Lylat Wars (aka Star Fox 64) on Nintendo 64. I personally like this game a lot more than Lylat Wars, or any of the StarWing games for that matter, it has better level design, better balanced challenge, better visuals, better controls, no annoying sidekicks with awful voice acting that you need to constantly save from their own inability do the simplest tasks without screwing it up and getting themselves into needless trouble, far better bosses and better variation in the mission types.
It has both the on-rail and free-flight type of levels, just like Lylat Wars, but it does a better job with the level design and mission parameters so they feel more varied and less repetitive than anything Lylat Wars has to offer.
The weapon powerup and shield pickups are nicely implemented by shooting entire waves of enemy ships, strongly encouraging you to go after whole sets of enemies rather than just blasting away aimlessly at as many single targets as possible, excellently focusing the gameplay challenge on a nice flow of continues amounts of action.
I like the characters and the story, the voice acting is great and the game does an overall good job telling the story and getting you interested in what's happening without coming off as needlessly clichéd, stiff, shallow, overly dramatic without the sufficient payoff to validate such drama or plain stupid, unlike Lylat Wars which fails miserably on all these fronts.
It's a shame Space Debris was a PAL exclusive as it greatly limited the exposure of this great game.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System)
Xyanide Resurrection (PlayStation Portable)
Been using the Notes and Graffiti features to draw some doodles on 3DS.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
It's a really great game, the first two missions are a bit on the challenging side but you get some vehicle stages and a boss fight that are a lot more manageable after that, I haven't gotten much further than that yet but I'm really loving this game so far, one of the best games on Game Boy Color I've ever played.
Star Fox 64 3D (3DS)
It's a good remake of the Nintendo 64 game Lylat Wars, with a good visual upgrade and everything else kept very intact, the controls are fine and it plays smoothly, the biggest complaint for me is that it's too much like the original Lylat Wars in that they've added virtually nothing new beside the better visual quality, for example they could've easily added a cleaned up, high-res, smooth high framerate and stereoscopic 3D enhanced version of the original StarWing, as they never released the original Super Nintendo game as a port to the Game Boy Advance like the fans cried out for for so many years, sure there was the superior third-party game on GBA called Star X which had far better visuals and that played with a nice, high and smooth framerate than StarWing, but without the Nintendo brand recognition it sadly never become more than a hidden gem.
Star Fox 64 3D is still a good game if you can find it cheap enough, I got the Nintendo Selects version which is like a Platinum, Essentials or Classics type of cheaper re-release, so it can thankfully be found for an acceptable price these days for those who are interested.
UPDATE August 3rd
Beat it around 17:40 using no continues, it's short and easy but it has multiple paths to play through so it's got replay value for multiple playthroughs.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
A European exclusive that has many similarities to Lylat Wars (aka Star Fox 64) on Nintendo 64. I personally like this game a lot more than Lylat Wars, or any of the StarWing games for that matter, it has better level design, better balanced challenge, better visuals, better controls, no annoying sidekicks with awful voice acting that you need to constantly save from their own inability do the simplest tasks without screwing it up and getting themselves into needless trouble, far better bosses and better variation in the mission types.
It has both the on-rail and free-flight type of levels, just like Lylat Wars, but it does a better job with the level design and mission parameters so they feel more varied and less repetitive than anything Lylat Wars has to offer.
The weapon powerup and shield pickups are nicely implemented by shooting entire waves of enemy ships, strongly encouraging you to go after whole sets of enemies rather than just blasting away aimlessly at as many single targets as possible, excellently focusing the gameplay challenge on a nice flow of continues amounts of action.
I like the characters and the story, the voice acting is great and the game does an overall good job telling the story and getting you interested in what's happening without coming off as needlessly clichéd, stiff, shallow, overly dramatic without the sufficient payoff to validate such drama or plain stupid, unlike Lylat Wars which fails miserably on all these fronts.
It's a shame Space Debris was a PAL exclusive as it greatly limited the exposure of this great game.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System)
Xyanide Resurrection (PlayStation Portable)
Been using the Notes and Graffiti features to draw some doodles on 3DS.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
It's a really great game, the first two missions are a bit on the challenging side but you get some vehicle stages and a boss fight that are a lot more manageable after that, I haven't gotten much further than that yet but I'm really loving this game so far, one of the best games on Game Boy Color I've ever played.
Tuesday, July 4, 2017
Gaming Purchases - Juli 2017
Juli 4th:
I placed an order for some games and gaming related stuff at the end of Juni, all new stuff, even the older items.
The first packet arrived today containing a PSP 2000 headphone remote control for music playback, I only had the original remote control for the original PSP 1000 model, which is not compatible with the 2000 (or 3000 in my case) model because they changed the design of the plug to allow for video output on the 2000 model for playing on TVs.
Hardware:
PSP 2000 Remote Control
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Juli 5th:
Almost everything else came today, in three separate packets, and only a couple of things are still missing, the GBA screen protector+light I ordered three of, one for each of my three GBAs, but strangely enough one of them came today packed with some of the other stuff, so why they sent the other two of the same type separately I don't know, I just hope they sent it at all so it's not been a mistake because I fucking hate having to deal with shit like that.
Hardware:
a Game Boy Advance X-Light with screen protector
an original Sony PlayStation link-cable
a red TTX Tech Classic Controller for GameCube
two GameCube controller extension cords
Game Boy Color:
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends
Game Boy Advance:
Back Track
DS:
Garfield's Nightmare
MX Vs ATV Reflex
PlayStation:
Battle Arena Toshinden 4
Crisis Beat (I already owned this but the copy I had was a second hand purchase and a bit battered)
PlayStation 2:
Resident Evil Code Veronica X
PC:
Slipstream 5000
Virtua Fighter PC
Juli 7th:
Turns out the two missing X-Lights were lost in the mail and i won't be getting them after all, they didn't have any more in stock either so I'll just be getting my money back.
Juli 8th:
Ugh, now they sent me a new bill to pay but it's updated wrong, instead of three X-Lights in now says two, but I only got one, they only reduced it by one when two were missing. I've contacted them about it but because it's the weekend I'll have to wait till monday for a reply.
Juli 10th:
I got a reply and if I understood it correctly I'm going to get a new bill with the updated correct info on it soon, but I haven't gotten it yet.
Juli 12th:
I got another reply and it's basically the same as the very first I got, and I still haven't gotten the updated bill yet, they did push up the paying date to the 21st though, so now I just gotta wait some more and hope they don't fuck up any more.
Juli 14th:
Finally got the updated bill with correct info today so I can pay for these things already.
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Juli 19th:
I ordered some more games and stuff a few days ago that arrived today. All items are new and sealed.
3DS:
Fast & Furious Showdown
Fossil Fighters Frontier
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed
Sega 3D Classics Collection
Star Fox 64 3D
Xbox 360:
Binary Domain
Other:
Super Mario Collection Princess Daisy Amiibo
Yo-kai Watch Tattletell
I placed an order for some games and gaming related stuff at the end of Juni, all new stuff, even the older items.
The first packet arrived today containing a PSP 2000 headphone remote control for music playback, I only had the original remote control for the original PSP 1000 model, which is not compatible with the 2000 (or 3000 in my case) model because they changed the design of the plug to allow for video output on the 2000 model for playing on TVs.
Hardware:
PSP 2000 Remote Control
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juli 5th:
Almost everything else came today, in three separate packets, and only a couple of things are still missing, the GBA screen protector+light I ordered three of, one for each of my three GBAs, but strangely enough one of them came today packed with some of the other stuff, so why they sent the other two of the same type separately I don't know, I just hope they sent it at all so it's not been a mistake because I fucking hate having to deal with shit like that.
Hardware:
a Game Boy Advance X-Light with screen protector
an original Sony PlayStation link-cable
a red TTX Tech Classic Controller for GameCube
two GameCube controller extension cords
Game Boy Color:
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends
Game Boy Advance:
Back Track
DS:
Garfield's Nightmare
MX Vs ATV Reflex
PlayStation:
Battle Arena Toshinden 4
Crisis Beat (I already owned this but the copy I had was a second hand purchase and a bit battered)
PlayStation 2:
Resident Evil Code Veronica X
PC:
Slipstream 5000
Virtua Fighter PC
Juli 7th:
Turns out the two missing X-Lights were lost in the mail and i won't be getting them after all, they didn't have any more in stock either so I'll just be getting my money back.
Juli 8th:
Ugh, now they sent me a new bill to pay but it's updated wrong, instead of three X-Lights in now says two, but I only got one, they only reduced it by one when two were missing. I've contacted them about it but because it's the weekend I'll have to wait till monday for a reply.
Juli 10th:
I got a reply and if I understood it correctly I'm going to get a new bill with the updated correct info on it soon, but I haven't gotten it yet.
Juli 12th:
I got another reply and it's basically the same as the very first I got, and I still haven't gotten the updated bill yet, they did push up the paying date to the 21st though, so now I just gotta wait some more and hope they don't fuck up any more.
Juli 14th:
Finally got the updated bill with correct info today so I can pay for these things already.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juli 19th:
I ordered some more games and stuff a few days ago that arrived today. All items are new and sealed.
3DS:
Fast & Furious Showdown
Fossil Fighters Frontier
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed
Sega 3D Classics Collection
Star Fox 64 3D
Xbox 360:
Binary Domain
Other:
Super Mario Collection Princess Daisy Amiibo
Yo-kai Watch Tattletell
Now Playing - Juli 2017
Been playing some more of my DS games on my newly acquired 3DS, also been taking some stereoscopic "3D" photos with it, which is a neat function, too bad I don't have any 3DS games yet, there aren't really that many I want except maybe Metroid Samus Returns which isn't coming out for another two months and a select few that are a bit on the pricey side and are hard to find. I did get hold of some good ones this month though.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this regularly every day for about three months now and I can say it's pretty much run it's course. It hasn't gotten any better, it remains a poorly executed unbalanced mess with some minor redeemable fun to be had when taken on it's own.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
I'm stuck on a mission where I have to put out some busses on fire with a fire extinguisher, the timer is brutal and the touch screen aiming controls are not helping, great game otherwise but this mission can go fuck itself.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's not as good as it is on PSP and every step of the way I take in this version reminds me of that fact.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color, playing on Game Boy Advance)
A very dark game, not the best idea for a game made for portables without backlit screens, but the game itself is very well made, has some nice light effects and the level of detail is excellent, the entire level of technical quality overall is some of the best I've seen on Game Boy Color alongside games like Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare and the Harry Potter RPGs.
Sadly the game is very hard to play, not just because it's hard to see without good light conditions but also because it just doesn't play that well, it's got clunky controls, tough enemies and no way to recap what you're suppose to be doing, so remembering the mission briefing given to you before a missions starts is imperative. I gave my new GBA Advance X-Light a try and it made the game a lot easier to see, but the difficulty still kicked my ass regardless. Suffice to say I haven't gotten past the first mission yet.
Back Track (Game Boy Advance)
An FPS similar to Wolfenstein 3D and Zero Tolerance, it plays fast and relatively smooth but it's tough to aim, shoot and dodge as the controls have a lag in the animation of everything you do, you don't aim, move or shoot right away when you press the buttons, making it very unresponsive and much more difficult than it actually is. Your goal is to rescue abducted humans from aliens while gunning down the aliens and their machines.
MX Vs ATV Reflex (DS, playing on 3DS)
A pretty bad racing game with motocross bikes, ATVs, trophy trucks and monster trucks, it has pretty awkward basic controls and the advanced controls for tricks and such are even worse, it's not unplayable but it has enough issues that it's a lot less fun that it should be.
Garfield's Nightmare (DS, playing on 3DS)
Not bad at all actually, a simple platformer where you play as Garfield in his nightmares after having eaten too much food before naptime. It looks very nice, well styled, detailed and animated, one of the best DS games I've played so far.
UPDATE: I completed it 100% on the 9th, around 04:30 at night, took me about 5 hours.
Battle Arena Toshinden 4 (PlayStation)
It's not what I imagined, it has about as much to do with my beloved Battle Arena Toshinden 2 that any other random fighting game from any other completely irrelevant series does, it doesn't have the same characters anymore, at best there are some relatives and stuff to some characters from the older games and that's about it, it's not good enough in my opinion, I play Toshinden for Sofia first and foremost and her absence is one of the major complaints I have against this game, it also doesn't play quite the same, it doesn't look the same in the art style nor does it look as good visually in the technical department either, with simpler blob shadows and Tekken-esque arenas with little to no detail other than a ground texture and some very scarce background detail, it's just completely different in every way really, it only shares the genre of being a fighting game and that you have weapons to fight with, that's it. The fact that it's a continuation of the story when it's made so different means little to nothing for me as the feel of the story being relevant is completely gone when the characters that made the story aren't there anymore.
That being said, it's not awful or anything, it still looks okay and animates smoothly, it reminds me a lot of Tekken in how it looks overall, with blockier character models that animate rather slowly, it has some really cool and cinematic special attacks, somewhat similar to Evil Zone, and it plays just fine with the controls, the free moving ability is neat even if it's a lot more limited from normal gameplay when activated, as most other fighting games do from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's just not a game that stands out like the name suggested it would, or at least not in the way I had imagined.
So while it doesn't hold up to Battle Arena Toshinden 2 in any way it's still a good game, just not as great as it should've been given the honorable title of Toshinden and being a rather late title on the PlayStation it ultimately fails to impress.
By 1999 and 2000 there were many other fighting games around both on PlayStation and the other active systems, like the new next gen Dreamcast with games like SoulCalibur no less, that simply made this game look bad by comparison.
However, it should be mentioned that this was released as a low budget title, and re-released as such two more times after that in 2001 by two different budget brands only a day apart, so they at least acknowledged that it wouldn't cut it had they tried to sell it at full price.
There are minigames and unlockable art and stuff too, so there's at least a good amount of content.
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
Decided to give this game a try again. I actually got first place in a stock race, but it was on easy, I still haven't been able to win on normal. I just needed a win, the stock racing mode is really hard so any win was welcome at this point.
Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
A small mixed bag of old 8-bit and 16-bit generation games from Sega, faithfully re-created for 3DS.
It has some great games but also some highly questionable additions and omissions, like oddly enough it has no version of Space Harrier or OutRun, even though in Japan they got both as downloadables and could've easily added them to this collection, but it has three Fantasy Zone games, whereof two are just different version of Fantasy Zone 2 and the other is a secret you can find by clicking on an empty area of the touch screen at the Extra Games menu.
The three Fantasy Zone games included are Fantasy Zone for Master System, Fantasy Zone 2 Tears of Opa Opa for Master System and Fantasy Zone 2 W.
There are some great games on here though, like the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, the arcade version of both Galaxy Force II and Thunder Blade and the original Master System game Maze Walker.
There's also the Mega Drive version of Altered Beast, the previously arcade exclusive racing game Power Drift and Puyo Puyo 2.
Here's a screenshot I took of Maze Walker/Maze Hunter 3-D for Master System using the Kega Fusion emulator.
If you cross your eyes and line the two images up as one you'll get a good idea of what the 3D depth effect in this game is like, it's really nice to see in real life on a 3DS or on an original Master System with 3D glasses.
Killzone Mercenary (PlayStation Vita)
Decided to play something else now that I'm done with Smart As. I want to play something that makes me impressed by the Vita again after so much mediocrity and this game is literally the most impressive portable game I've ever seen and I just so happen to own a copy of it to play.
Fast & Furious Showdown (3DS)
It's a pretty good port of the game, a little choppy in the framerate but still playable. It's a very unbalanced game, with some things being near impossible, taking dussins of tries before you win, while others are so easy you can't help but get them on the first try, without even trying.
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed (3DS)
A basic platformer, it offers nothing that hasn't been done better before many times by countless other games, but it's okay, the framerate is strangely not very good considering how unimpressive the game looks, it's just a very basic and barely 2,5D platformer, with 2D backgrounds and 3D models for Katsuma and the enemies, it doesn't really do anything to push the hardware so why it's not a solid 60fps I don't know, it should be when it's this visually underwhelming.
UPDATE 29th Juli
Beat the game with only a few things missing for 100% completion. It was a very short game.
UPDATE 30th Juli
Completed everything else, you get Hard Mode unlocked and you can find some hidden cheat codes if you explore a bit.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Been playing this regularly every day for about three months now and I can say it's pretty much run it's course. It hasn't gotten any better, it remains a poorly executed unbalanced mess with some minor redeemable fun to be had when taken on it's own.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
I'm stuck on a mission where I have to put out some busses on fire with a fire extinguisher, the timer is brutal and the touch screen aiming controls are not helping, great game otherwise but this mission can go fuck itself.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's not as good as it is on PSP and every step of the way I take in this version reminds me of that fact.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color, playing on Game Boy Advance)
A very dark game, not the best idea for a game made for portables without backlit screens, but the game itself is very well made, has some nice light effects and the level of detail is excellent, the entire level of technical quality overall is some of the best I've seen on Game Boy Color alongside games like Alone in the Dark The New Nightmare and the Harry Potter RPGs.
Sadly the game is very hard to play, not just because it's hard to see without good light conditions but also because it just doesn't play that well, it's got clunky controls, tough enemies and no way to recap what you're suppose to be doing, so remembering the mission briefing given to you before a missions starts is imperative. I gave my new GBA Advance X-Light a try and it made the game a lot easier to see, but the difficulty still kicked my ass regardless. Suffice to say I haven't gotten past the first mission yet.
Back Track (Game Boy Advance)
An FPS similar to Wolfenstein 3D and Zero Tolerance, it plays fast and relatively smooth but it's tough to aim, shoot and dodge as the controls have a lag in the animation of everything you do, you don't aim, move or shoot right away when you press the buttons, making it very unresponsive and much more difficult than it actually is. Your goal is to rescue abducted humans from aliens while gunning down the aliens and their machines.
MX Vs ATV Reflex (DS, playing on 3DS)
A pretty bad racing game with motocross bikes, ATVs, trophy trucks and monster trucks, it has pretty awkward basic controls and the advanced controls for tricks and such are even worse, it's not unplayable but it has enough issues that it's a lot less fun that it should be.
Garfield's Nightmare (DS, playing on 3DS)
Not bad at all actually, a simple platformer where you play as Garfield in his nightmares after having eaten too much food before naptime. It looks very nice, well styled, detailed and animated, one of the best DS games I've played so far.
UPDATE: I completed it 100% on the 9th, around 04:30 at night, took me about 5 hours.
Battle Arena Toshinden 4 (PlayStation)
It's not what I imagined, it has about as much to do with my beloved Battle Arena Toshinden 2 that any other random fighting game from any other completely irrelevant series does, it doesn't have the same characters anymore, at best there are some relatives and stuff to some characters from the older games and that's about it, it's not good enough in my opinion, I play Toshinden for Sofia first and foremost and her absence is one of the major complaints I have against this game, it also doesn't play quite the same, it doesn't look the same in the art style nor does it look as good visually in the technical department either, with simpler blob shadows and Tekken-esque arenas with little to no detail other than a ground texture and some very scarce background detail, it's just completely different in every way really, it only shares the genre of being a fighting game and that you have weapons to fight with, that's it. The fact that it's a continuation of the story when it's made so different means little to nothing for me as the feel of the story being relevant is completely gone when the characters that made the story aren't there anymore.
That being said, it's not awful or anything, it still looks okay and animates smoothly, it reminds me a lot of Tekken in how it looks overall, with blockier character models that animate rather slowly, it has some really cool and cinematic special attacks, somewhat similar to Evil Zone, and it plays just fine with the controls, the free moving ability is neat even if it's a lot more limited from normal gameplay when activated, as most other fighting games do from the late 90s and early 2000s, it's just not a game that stands out like the name suggested it would, or at least not in the way I had imagined.
So while it doesn't hold up to Battle Arena Toshinden 2 in any way it's still a good game, just not as great as it should've been given the honorable title of Toshinden and being a rather late title on the PlayStation it ultimately fails to impress.
By 1999 and 2000 there were many other fighting games around both on PlayStation and the other active systems, like the new next gen Dreamcast with games like SoulCalibur no less, that simply made this game look bad by comparison.
However, it should be mentioned that this was released as a low budget title, and re-released as such two more times after that in 2001 by two different budget brands only a day apart, so they at least acknowledged that it wouldn't cut it had they tried to sell it at full price.
There are minigames and unlockable art and stuff too, so there's at least a good amount of content.
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
Decided to give this game a try again. I actually got first place in a stock race, but it was on easy, I still haven't been able to win on normal. I just needed a win, the stock racing mode is really hard so any win was welcome at this point.
Sega 3D Classics Collection (3DS)
A small mixed bag of old 8-bit and 16-bit generation games from Sega, faithfully re-created for 3DS.
It has some great games but also some highly questionable additions and omissions, like oddly enough it has no version of Space Harrier or OutRun, even though in Japan they got both as downloadables and could've easily added them to this collection, but it has three Fantasy Zone games, whereof two are just different version of Fantasy Zone 2 and the other is a secret you can find by clicking on an empty area of the touch screen at the Extra Games menu.
The three Fantasy Zone games included are Fantasy Zone for Master System, Fantasy Zone 2 Tears of Opa Opa for Master System and Fantasy Zone 2 W.
There are some great games on here though, like the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, the arcade version of both Galaxy Force II and Thunder Blade and the original Master System game Maze Walker.
There's also the Mega Drive version of Altered Beast, the previously arcade exclusive racing game Power Drift and Puyo Puyo 2.
Here's a screenshot I took of Maze Walker/Maze Hunter 3-D for Master System using the Kega Fusion emulator.
If you cross your eyes and line the two images up as one you'll get a good idea of what the 3D depth effect in this game is like, it's really nice to see in real life on a 3DS or on an original Master System with 3D glasses.
Killzone Mercenary (PlayStation Vita)
Decided to play something else now that I'm done with Smart As. I want to play something that makes me impressed by the Vita again after so much mediocrity and this game is literally the most impressive portable game I've ever seen and I just so happen to own a copy of it to play.
Fast & Furious Showdown (3DS)
It's a pretty good port of the game, a little choppy in the framerate but still playable. It's a very unbalanced game, with some things being near impossible, taking dussins of tries before you win, while others are so easy you can't help but get them on the first try, without even trying.
Moshi Monsters Katsuma Unleashed (3DS)
A basic platformer, it offers nothing that hasn't been done better before many times by countless other games, but it's okay, the framerate is strangely not very good considering how unimpressive the game looks, it's just a very basic and barely 2,5D platformer, with 2D backgrounds and 3D models for Katsuma and the enemies, it doesn't really do anything to push the hardware so why it's not a solid 60fps I don't know, it should be when it's this visually underwhelming.
UPDATE 29th Juli
Beat the game with only a few things missing for 100% completion. It was a very short game.
UPDATE 30th Juli
Completed everything else, you get Hard Mode unlocked and you can find some hidden cheat codes if you explore a bit.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Gaming Purchases - Juni 2017
Juni 27th:
I went and got myself a 3DS at the local GameStop today, complete in original box with charger and a 4GB SD card, also got some games.
DS:
Star Wars Lethal Alliance
3DS:
3DS Aqua Blue
3DS Charger
4GB SD Card
PlayStation 3:
Beijing 2008
Xbox 360:
Gears of War
Gears of War Judgement
Halo Reach
Zone of the Enders HD Collection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juni 29th:
I placed an order for a whole bunch of stuff but I'll add it to next month's post as none of it will arrive until early next month anyway.
I went and got myself a 3DS at the local GameStop today, complete in original box with charger and a 4GB SD card, also got some games.
DS:
Star Wars Lethal Alliance
3DS:
3DS Aqua Blue
3DS Charger
4GB SD Card
PlayStation 3:
Beijing 2008
Xbox 360:
Gears of War
Gears of War Judgement
Halo Reach
Zone of the Enders HD Collection
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juni 29th:
I placed an order for a whole bunch of stuff but I'll add it to next month's post as none of it will arrive until early next month anyway.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
TV Broken
Welp, my old SDTV broke yesterday, it makes this weird noise and blinks red with the power indicator. It may be fixable, I dunno. And this just a few days after my 32X was having issues with the sound. Until I get my TV fixed or replaced I'm going to have to resort to alternative ways to see my games, I have my PSP and Vita for remote play on PS3 but that's far from ideal, my best bet is probably to use my USB video grabbers with composite or S-video cables, it may come with a bit of lag and loss of quality in the conversion process but it's better than nothing, at least for now. I also have a couple of smaller older TVs but they are 50hz only and lack most of the cable connections, I think they either have RF only or possibly RF and mono composite on one of them.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Now Playing - Juni 2017
Staring off this month with an old classic puzzle game called Swing for PlayStation, Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli on PS2 and the PS2 version of Shadow The Hedgehog.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Getting a bit tired of this now, my longest record of playing the daily challenge was 45 days in a row. I noticed early on that the game has issues with controls and stuff and it's been that way without change this entire time, it's a deeply flawed game but it has minor moments when it can be very enjoyable, so it's not all bad, it's just far too flawed to be anything special, sadly.
Swing (PlayStation)
Essentially my third top favorite puzzle game of all time after Mercury and Mercury Meltdown on PSP and the ports Mercury Meltdown Remix on PS2 and Mercury Meltdown Revolution on Wii. It's a relatively unknown game for most, so here's what you do, you place numbered orbs on scales, line up three in a row to create chains removing any connected orbs, the numbers work both as weight on the scales and as points and if you stack 5 orbs on each other they collapse into one orb with the combined number value/wight. There are special orbs with other abilities such as bombs that clear every orb they are close to, color switching orbs that do various different things, star orbs that can transform when in contact with other special orbs and so on.
You die when a stack of orbs reaches the top where the orbs are grabbed. You have a manual orb grabber and a row of refilling orbs at the top of the screen.
There's also the aspect of the scales to keep in mind as if you let a heavy orb fall down on a scale when there's a light orb on the other side it will throw the light orb up and depending on the weight difference it will travel so many steps to the side opposite of where it was in regard to the heavy orb on the scale, if the weight it enough it will push the light orb off screen and it will then turn into a star orb and come out the other side or if heavy enough it can pass over and become a bomb the second time, this can go on for as big as the weight difference was, so a super heavy orb with a high number, say 67, the lighter orb will fly over the screen multiple times swifting back and forth between bomb and star orb before landing. It's a very complex game with many things to keep in mind and it's tons of fun.
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PlayStation 2)
It's been almost exactly a year since I bought and played this game last, so I thought why not play it again, and because I saw no reason not to, I did.
Shadow The Hedgehog (PlayStation 2)
Haven't played the PS2 version in about two years now, I think. I got the GameCube and Xbox versions about a year and a half ago and while they both play a lot better than this with rock solid smooth 60fps framerates and with high color palettes, this version remains the only one that's never frozen on me, even after being my most played version because I owned it since the game was new I've still never had it freeze on me one, and I've played it a lot over the years so it's by far the most stable one to play even if the framerate is choppy as times and the color depth is a bit low, on GameCube it freezes a lot, you can barely make it through a single mission sometimes, on Xbox it can freeze every now and then but you can usually play a few missions at least, on PS2 I can play for hours and complete several playthroughs of the story mode and play through a whole bunch of manually selected levels and still nt see it freeze once, that makes the PS2 version the ultimate winner of the three in my book, the slight graphical and performance advantage the other two have mean very little when you can't enjoy them due to freezing issues, especially on the GameCube. Great game though, I always loved it, it's not perfect but it's great game with tons of content and fun varied gameplay. One of the last great games Sega ever made, together with Sonic Riders, Sonic Riders Zero Gravity and Sonic 06, before they exclusively started making atrocious shit only.
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
An okay racing game with some variety in the form of different types of racing, like sports car street racing, dune buggy racing and rally racing among a few others. It's kind of basic by home console game standards but not as bad as arcade games.
Battle Arena Toshinden (PlayStation)
An early and somewhat basic 3D fighting game, along with games like Virtua Fighter this was the beginning of modern fighting games.
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (PlayStation)
An excellent sequel that made for a much more involved game than the original, a personal nostalgic classic for me as well as it was the very first 3D fighting game I ever played.
Cardinal Syn (PlayStation)
Another early 3D fighting game, not a great one sadly, it has very simple and unpolished gameplay.
Criticom (PlayStation)
Almost the same game as Cardinal Syn actually, same gameplay style of 3D fighting with same problems, but with far fewer options overall it's even worse.
Motorhead (PlayStation)
A buttery smooth racing game with some nice solid visuals and cool futuristic design, a great game and personal classic, though I only ever had a demo of the PlayStation version, I had the PC version instead, but they're virtually the same.
Psychic Force (PlayStation)
I love the Dreamcast game Psychic Force 2012 but without a functional Dreamcast I'm left to testing the older PlayStation game instead. It's not as good as the excellent Dreamcast game, naturally, but it's still good for what it is. No Regina kills it for me personally as she's one of my top all time favorite characters in all of gaming.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A dungeon crawler hack-n-slash with traps, it's cool.
Ghen War (Saturn)
A Saturn exclusive first person mech game in similar style of Krazy Ivan.
Sudoku (portable LCD game)
Changed to new batteries in my portable LCD Sudoku game so I can solve some Sudokus again without having to draw lines and write shit down on paper like a filthy animal.
Intellivision Lives! (PlayStation 2)
I completely forgot I had this. I got it back in 2012 while GameStop was selling out their PS2 games cheap alongside a whole bunch of other games but for some reason this one completely slipped my mind and I had actually recently been looking to buy it as I've been curious about Intellivision lately.
It's actually kind of cool, it emulates the old games very well in most cases, some visual glitches are present but nothing major, for this kind of compilation at least it's fairly good.
I've tried most of them and some of the games are definitely better than others, but it's fun being able to play all these old games and see what they're like even if they're not exactly like how they are on the original hardware, like the analog controls aren't emulated properly, the original Intellivision has a 16 way pseudo-analog circle-pad, yet using the analog sticks on PS2 only emulates 8 direction in total, giving far less control in some games than they originally had back in the day, which is a bummer as that was one of the really cool things it did so early in gaming history, at least in my opinion, at least it has an okay way to emulate the 12-button keypad on screen with accurate overlays for each game making it much easier than trying to remember corresponding button combinations, so kudos for that at least.
It's actually got some really cool games on it and I've found quite a lot of favorites already. It's safe to say Intellivision is my oldest favorite console now, I love it.
UPDATE:
I've been enjoying Night Stalker and Tower of Doom the most, those are two really great games and I really like them. So much in fact that I recorded some gameplay footage of them and made some fanart of Night Stalker in Windows Journal!
V-Rally 3 (PlayStation 2)
After having played so much V-Rally and V-Rally 2 recently, and the GBA version of V-Rally 3 in the past, I feel it's time to give V-Rally 3 on PS2 a proper go, I tested it earlier this year when I got it but I didn't continue playing, it was just to test that it worked and to get some first impressions. Now I want to put myself into a bit more and see what it can do, we'll see if I stick with it or not, it all depends on how good it is, I guess, I've been rather spoiled by the other V-Rally games so this has a lot to live up to. So it sucks when you instantly notice the framerate issues, screen tearing and visuals glitches everywhere, like how the entire bodywork of the car just disappears randomly, this happens very often during replays, and how the handling is very low on grip and very high on bouncing all over the fucking place including launching the entire car into the air while driving on normal flat road surfaces. It's not great, it does not surpass V-Rally or V-Rally 2 overall, it adds some new things like detailed vehicle damage and more polygonal detail, but when it's so much glitchier, less optimized and worse to play it's a clear step down in quality. It's still good enough, I've played many worse rally games than this, it's just a disappointment for the series and a lesser game in the genre than what the contemporary competition had to offer, Sega Rally 2 on Dreamcast and PC for example blows this game away in every conceivable way and all the Colin McRae games of the time also do a better job than this in every way, but when even the older V-Rally, Colin McRae and Sega Rally games are better than this overall it was already clear this game wasn't competing for first place anymore and it's understandable the series ended with this title, sad, but makes sense if this was the best they could do.
Pro Rally 2002 (GameCube)
Couldn't resist firing up the only original GameCube rally game I own after having played so many rally games lately. It's a good one, more in line with arcade rally games like Sega Rally 2 than the more simulation based games. I like it, I'd like to get hold of the PS2 version some day as well. It has some really tight handling for the cars, the normal brake can stop just about anything at any speed and the handbrake is exclusively useful for powersliding as it offers little to no braking ability. It's got a mixed bag of visuals though, while the cars and special effects on the cars, like the real-time reflections and shadows look great, the environments look almost a generation behind, especially by comparison with the great looking cars. There's no damage modeling but it has dirt and snow accumulating on the cars as they drive, much like V-Rally 2 had several years earlier on PlayStation, so it's kind of average by contemporary standards of the time. It's got a nice selection of cars, very nice actually, with modern cars and some classics like the Audi Quattro, which I appreciate a lot.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Giving this another go as well, I briefly tested it last month when I got it but I was testing so many new games I only got to dive deeper into a handful of them. As for this one, it's growing on me, it has a very unique feeling to it, it's very slip and slide slippery in the handling, as the name suggests it's not aiming to be a rally simulator so offering something non-standard is fine. It doesn't have damage modeling but it has dynamic dirt on the car, so if you drive in some mud, it gets really dark dirty brown, then if you drive on dry dirt the dust sticks to the car instead so it becomes brighter, and if you drive through water it cleans the car off entirely, it's a nice effect and it makes up for the lack of damage at least a little a bit. V-Rally 2 on PlayStation also had dirt on the car so this isn't the only game of that generation that had effects like this, but it's a nice effect regardless. Overall the game looks great and runs smoothly, it came out in 2002 so it's roughly the same age as V-Rally 3 and Pro Rally 2002 on the next gen consoles, kind of, Pro Rally 2002 was originally released on PC in 2000 or 2001, I forget which year exactly, and was originally called Pro Rally 2001, so it's a little older than the slightly newer PlayStation 2 and GameCube console ports, but regardless, WRC Arcade is good so far and I like it, it's a competent and well made arcade style rally game and it easily competes with the next gen offerings because of this.
I'm glad they showed the original PlayStation some love so late into it's lifespan, it deserved to go out with some stellar titles like this and F1 Arcade, even if F1 Arcade was a bit too choppy framerate wise in my opinion, they should've been able to optimize that game better for a proper solid 25fps at least if you ask me. Oh well, at least this game runs silky smooth, which puts it a relatively clear step above V-Rally 3 on PlayStation 2, with all the minor but constant framerate drops, slowdown and screen tearing issues that game sadly has alongside a whole bunch of glitches.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Bubsy 3D (PlayStation)
I have two complaints about this game. 1) You turn too slowly. 2) You keep up the running when you stop pressing forward if you're still holding left or right, you need to let go of all directions to stop otherwise he'll keep running, this is an awkward control design choice. Honestly I'm really liking everything else, I love low poly flat shaded 3D graphics and I think this game looks fantastic, I love the cheesy 90s cartoony humor, it's silly, it's colorful, the rest of the controls are fine, I actually really like the jumping as it reminds me of the excellent Jumping Flash! games becuase you get kind of strafing controls with a downward camera angle when you jump to make platform jumping a lot easier, this is something I usually don't like in 3D platformers but here it's some of the best I've ever played. The hate and underrating of this game is wildly incorrect as far as I can tell and most likely nothing more than the typical internet follow-the-leader retardation.
Doom (32X)
Just found out there're give all and god mode cheats for this version, UMAC and UMXZ, finally a way to acquire the BFG9000! It disables entry to the secret level and the final level so you can't get the true ending but that's fine, the BFG makes it well worth it. On a sadder note the sound doesn't seem to play properly, the sound effects are all really low volume during gameplay, it's not suppose to be like that. I hope nothing is wrong with my 32X, I know it's old tech but I only got it about one and a half years ago, I haven't enjoyed it enough for it to break already.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Metal Head (32X)
Virtua Racing Deluxe (32X)
Just testing out my other 32X games a few more Mega Drive games to see if they have sound issues too. There's definitely something not right with the 32X sound, certain channels are weird, I guess, as some noises are normal others are really muted and barely make a noise at all, the Sega logo in Virtua Racing uses the 32X sound chip for an engine noise and it sounds really weird, not at all like it should. This really sucks.
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
Captured some footage of Trident's stage overkill.
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
LHX Attack Chopper (Mega Drive)
Night Stalker (PC)
Found a very good homebrew port of the Intellivision classic Night Stalker but it didn't support USB controllers by default, so I also found a program called JoytoKey which let me assign custom keyboard and mouse functions to USB controllers. It works great and is fun to play now.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
A third person action game with puzzle elements as you control Rianna Saren, a female twi'lek, and her droid companion, it's better in every way on PSP but this is an okay version of the game, easily one of the best games on DS at least.
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like the GTA Liberty City Stories of DS, a third person open city game, only not as good in any way, it's not bad though, another one of the best games on DS.
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like Loaded or ReLoaded with a G.I. Joe movie license, it's pretty good, yet another one of the best games on DS.
Project Rub (DS, playing on 3DS)
A minigame style game with lots of weird stuff, I don't know what to even think of it yet, it's very different.
The Rub Rabbits! (DS, playing on 3DS)
The virtually identical sequel to Project Rub. I still don't get it, if anything I'm more confused.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's more visually interesting than the PSP port thanks to the cartoony celshaded style, but it plays worse due to the poor controls and all the touch screen shit you're forced to deal with, at least on PSP it was just QTE button stuff and as bad as that is I can at least live with it if it's short and not too frequent, but with motion controls such as poor touch screen controls I have a lot less patience and it really hurts the game, which is a shame as this is a good game otherwise.
Soleil (Mega Drive)
A clone of The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
A broken free-moving fighting game with some entertainment value. The AI is some of the worst I've ever seen but because of how extremely unbalanced the game is combined with how poorly it controls I'd say the AI being downright broken is what makes the game playable at all, if the opponent you were fighting had been smarter the game would've been unplayable with most characters as brute force very easily wins. On the flipside, playing as a character like Venom who is one of the most dangerous characters in the game, you can just wail on until you win against anyone you're up against, even technically more powerful opponents are easy to defeat because Venom isn't just overpowered, he also has very effective attacks that are easy and fast to pull off. So you can have a rather good time plowing through a few matches as Venom if you've had a bad day.
Visually it looks like a mid 90s PlayStation or Saturn budget title, the only good thing is that it allows the game to run smoothly and have rather big levels to fight on with some destructible scenery.
The character roster is quite good, with a nice and even mix of male and female characters, sadly it's a mixed bag of characters with only some being recognizable to anyone but the most avid Marvel fans. Personally I don't care much for Marvel, I like Scarlet Spider, Venom and Scream from the 90s Spider-Man comics as part of the clone saga, or whatever it's been called, I think I read that somewhere, and some of the characters in X-Men Evolution, that's it, so for me most of these characters are either completely unknown to me or characters I don't like or care for to begin with.
Sadly the clone saga and X-Men Evolution are not what this game is based on so none of the versions of those characters are in this, at best there are some versions of characters like Venom from Spider-Man and Storm from X-Men in this but they're just the basic-franchise-in-general versions of themselves, not from any specific series, at least as far as I can tell as someone who isn't a Marvel fan, it seems like it's closer to stuff like Pocket Fighter or Marvel Vs. Capcom or something, it's just a bunch of franchises thrown together to make a game with no deeper thought or plan to it.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
Getting a bit tired of this now, my longest record of playing the daily challenge was 45 days in a row. I noticed early on that the game has issues with controls and stuff and it's been that way without change this entire time, it's a deeply flawed game but it has minor moments when it can be very enjoyable, so it's not all bad, it's just far too flawed to be anything special, sadly.
Swing (PlayStation)
Essentially my third top favorite puzzle game of all time after Mercury and Mercury Meltdown on PSP and the ports Mercury Meltdown Remix on PS2 and Mercury Meltdown Revolution on Wii. It's a relatively unknown game for most, so here's what you do, you place numbered orbs on scales, line up three in a row to create chains removing any connected orbs, the numbers work both as weight on the scales and as points and if you stack 5 orbs on each other they collapse into one orb with the combined number value/wight. There are special orbs with other abilities such as bombs that clear every orb they are close to, color switching orbs that do various different things, star orbs that can transform when in contact with other special orbs and so on.
You die when a stack of orbs reaches the top where the orbs are grabbed. You have a manual orb grabber and a row of refilling orbs at the top of the screen.
There's also the aspect of the scales to keep in mind as if you let a heavy orb fall down on a scale when there's a light orb on the other side it will throw the light orb up and depending on the weight difference it will travel so many steps to the side opposite of where it was in regard to the heavy orb on the scale, if the weight it enough it will push the light orb off screen and it will then turn into a star orb and come out the other side or if heavy enough it can pass over and become a bomb the second time, this can go on for as big as the weight difference was, so a super heavy orb with a high number, say 67, the lighter orb will fly over the screen multiple times swifting back and forth between bomb and star orb before landing. It's a very complex game with many things to keep in mind and it's tons of fun.
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PlayStation 2)
It's been almost exactly a year since I bought and played this game last, so I thought why not play it again, and because I saw no reason not to, I did.
Shadow The Hedgehog (PlayStation 2)
Haven't played the PS2 version in about two years now, I think. I got the GameCube and Xbox versions about a year and a half ago and while they both play a lot better than this with rock solid smooth 60fps framerates and with high color palettes, this version remains the only one that's never frozen on me, even after being my most played version because I owned it since the game was new I've still never had it freeze on me one, and I've played it a lot over the years so it's by far the most stable one to play even if the framerate is choppy as times and the color depth is a bit low, on GameCube it freezes a lot, you can barely make it through a single mission sometimes, on Xbox it can freeze every now and then but you can usually play a few missions at least, on PS2 I can play for hours and complete several playthroughs of the story mode and play through a whole bunch of manually selected levels and still nt see it freeze once, that makes the PS2 version the ultimate winner of the three in my book, the slight graphical and performance advantage the other two have mean very little when you can't enjoy them due to freezing issues, especially on the GameCube. Great game though, I always loved it, it's not perfect but it's great game with tons of content and fun varied gameplay. One of the last great games Sega ever made, together with Sonic Riders, Sonic Riders Zero Gravity and Sonic 06, before they exclusively started making atrocious shit only.
Total Drivin (PlayStation)
An okay racing game with some variety in the form of different types of racing, like sports car street racing, dune buggy racing and rally racing among a few others. It's kind of basic by home console game standards but not as bad as arcade games.
Battle Arena Toshinden (PlayStation)
An early and somewhat basic 3D fighting game, along with games like Virtua Fighter this was the beginning of modern fighting games.
Battle Arena Toshinden 2 (PlayStation)
An excellent sequel that made for a much more involved game than the original, a personal nostalgic classic for me as well as it was the very first 3D fighting game I ever played.
Cardinal Syn (PlayStation)
Another early 3D fighting game, not a great one sadly, it has very simple and unpolished gameplay.
Criticom (PlayStation)
Almost the same game as Cardinal Syn actually, same gameplay style of 3D fighting with same problems, but with far fewer options overall it's even worse.
Motorhead (PlayStation)
A buttery smooth racing game with some nice solid visuals and cool futuristic design, a great game and personal classic, though I only ever had a demo of the PlayStation version, I had the PC version instead, but they're virtually the same.
Psychic Force (PlayStation)
I love the Dreamcast game Psychic Force 2012 but without a functional Dreamcast I'm left to testing the older PlayStation game instead. It's not as good as the excellent Dreamcast game, naturally, but it's still good for what it is. No Regina kills it for me personally as she's one of my top all time favorite characters in all of gaming.
Deathtrap Dungeon (PlayStation)
A dungeon crawler hack-n-slash with traps, it's cool.
Ghen War (Saturn)
A Saturn exclusive first person mech game in similar style of Krazy Ivan.
Sudoku (portable LCD game)
Changed to new batteries in my portable LCD Sudoku game so I can solve some Sudokus again without having to draw lines and write shit down on paper like a filthy animal.
Intellivision Lives! (PlayStation 2)
I completely forgot I had this. I got it back in 2012 while GameStop was selling out their PS2 games cheap alongside a whole bunch of other games but for some reason this one completely slipped my mind and I had actually recently been looking to buy it as I've been curious about Intellivision lately.
It's actually kind of cool, it emulates the old games very well in most cases, some visual glitches are present but nothing major, for this kind of compilation at least it's fairly good.
I've tried most of them and some of the games are definitely better than others, but it's fun being able to play all these old games and see what they're like even if they're not exactly like how they are on the original hardware, like the analog controls aren't emulated properly, the original Intellivision has a 16 way pseudo-analog circle-pad, yet using the analog sticks on PS2 only emulates 8 direction in total, giving far less control in some games than they originally had back in the day, which is a bummer as that was one of the really cool things it did so early in gaming history, at least in my opinion, at least it has an okay way to emulate the 12-button keypad on screen with accurate overlays for each game making it much easier than trying to remember corresponding button combinations, so kudos for that at least.
It's actually got some really cool games on it and I've found quite a lot of favorites already. It's safe to say Intellivision is my oldest favorite console now, I love it.
UPDATE:
I've been enjoying Night Stalker and Tower of Doom the most, those are two really great games and I really like them. So much in fact that I recorded some gameplay footage of them and made some fanart of Night Stalker in Windows Journal!
V-Rally 3 (PlayStation 2)
After having played so much V-Rally and V-Rally 2 recently, and the GBA version of V-Rally 3 in the past, I feel it's time to give V-Rally 3 on PS2 a proper go, I tested it earlier this year when I got it but I didn't continue playing, it was just to test that it worked and to get some first impressions. Now I want to put myself into a bit more and see what it can do, we'll see if I stick with it or not, it all depends on how good it is, I guess, I've been rather spoiled by the other V-Rally games so this has a lot to live up to. So it sucks when you instantly notice the framerate issues, screen tearing and visuals glitches everywhere, like how the entire bodywork of the car just disappears randomly, this happens very often during replays, and how the handling is very low on grip and very high on bouncing all over the fucking place including launching the entire car into the air while driving on normal flat road surfaces. It's not great, it does not surpass V-Rally or V-Rally 2 overall, it adds some new things like detailed vehicle damage and more polygonal detail, but when it's so much glitchier, less optimized and worse to play it's a clear step down in quality. It's still good enough, I've played many worse rally games than this, it's just a disappointment for the series and a lesser game in the genre than what the contemporary competition had to offer, Sega Rally 2 on Dreamcast and PC for example blows this game away in every conceivable way and all the Colin McRae games of the time also do a better job than this in every way, but when even the older V-Rally, Colin McRae and Sega Rally games are better than this overall it was already clear this game wasn't competing for first place anymore and it's understandable the series ended with this title, sad, but makes sense if this was the best they could do.
Pro Rally 2002 (GameCube)
Couldn't resist firing up the only original GameCube rally game I own after having played so many rally games lately. It's a good one, more in line with arcade rally games like Sega Rally 2 than the more simulation based games. I like it, I'd like to get hold of the PS2 version some day as well. It has some really tight handling for the cars, the normal brake can stop just about anything at any speed and the handbrake is exclusively useful for powersliding as it offers little to no braking ability. It's got a mixed bag of visuals though, while the cars and special effects on the cars, like the real-time reflections and shadows look great, the environments look almost a generation behind, especially by comparison with the great looking cars. There's no damage modeling but it has dirt and snow accumulating on the cars as they drive, much like V-Rally 2 had several years earlier on PlayStation, so it's kind of average by contemporary standards of the time. It's got a nice selection of cars, very nice actually, with modern cars and some classics like the Audi Quattro, which I appreciate a lot.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Giving this another go as well, I briefly tested it last month when I got it but I was testing so many new games I only got to dive deeper into a handful of them. As for this one, it's growing on me, it has a very unique feeling to it, it's very slip and slide slippery in the handling, as the name suggests it's not aiming to be a rally simulator so offering something non-standard is fine. It doesn't have damage modeling but it has dynamic dirt on the car, so if you drive in some mud, it gets really dark dirty brown, then if you drive on dry dirt the dust sticks to the car instead so it becomes brighter, and if you drive through water it cleans the car off entirely, it's a nice effect and it makes up for the lack of damage at least a little a bit. V-Rally 2 on PlayStation also had dirt on the car so this isn't the only game of that generation that had effects like this, but it's a nice effect regardless. Overall the game looks great and runs smoothly, it came out in 2002 so it's roughly the same age as V-Rally 3 and Pro Rally 2002 on the next gen consoles, kind of, Pro Rally 2002 was originally released on PC in 2000 or 2001, I forget which year exactly, and was originally called Pro Rally 2001, so it's a little older than the slightly newer PlayStation 2 and GameCube console ports, but regardless, WRC Arcade is good so far and I like it, it's a competent and well made arcade style rally game and it easily competes with the next gen offerings because of this.
I'm glad they showed the original PlayStation some love so late into it's lifespan, it deserved to go out with some stellar titles like this and F1 Arcade, even if F1 Arcade was a bit too choppy framerate wise in my opinion, they should've been able to optimize that game better for a proper solid 25fps at least if you ask me. Oh well, at least this game runs silky smooth, which puts it a relatively clear step above V-Rally 3 on PlayStation 2, with all the minor but constant framerate drops, slowdown and screen tearing issues that game sadly has alongside a whole bunch of glitches.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Bubsy 3D (PlayStation)
I have two complaints about this game. 1) You turn too slowly. 2) You keep up the running when you stop pressing forward if you're still holding left or right, you need to let go of all directions to stop otherwise he'll keep running, this is an awkward control design choice. Honestly I'm really liking everything else, I love low poly flat shaded 3D graphics and I think this game looks fantastic, I love the cheesy 90s cartoony humor, it's silly, it's colorful, the rest of the controls are fine, I actually really like the jumping as it reminds me of the excellent Jumping Flash! games becuase you get kind of strafing controls with a downward camera angle when you jump to make platform jumping a lot easier, this is something I usually don't like in 3D platformers but here it's some of the best I've ever played. The hate and underrating of this game is wildly incorrect as far as I can tell and most likely nothing more than the typical internet follow-the-leader retardation.
Doom (32X)
Just found out there're give all and god mode cheats for this version, UMAC and UMXZ, finally a way to acquire the BFG9000! It disables entry to the secret level and the final level so you can't get the true ending but that's fine, the BFG makes it well worth it. On a sadder note the sound doesn't seem to play properly, the sound effects are all really low volume during gameplay, it's not suppose to be like that. I hope nothing is wrong with my 32X, I know it's old tech but I only got it about one and a half years ago, I haven't enjoyed it enough for it to break already.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Metal Head (32X)
Virtua Racing Deluxe (32X)
Just testing out my other 32X games a few more Mega Drive games to see if they have sound issues too. There's definitely something not right with the 32X sound, certain channels are weird, I guess, as some noises are normal others are really muted and barely make a noise at all, the Sega logo in Virtua Racing uses the 32X sound chip for an engine noise and it sounds really weird, not at all like it should. This really sucks.
Eternal Champions (Mega Drive)
Captured some footage of Trident's stage overkill.
Steel Talons (Mega Drive)
LHX Attack Chopper (Mega Drive)
Night Stalker (PC)
Found a very good homebrew port of the Intellivision classic Night Stalker but it didn't support USB controllers by default, so I also found a program called JoytoKey which let me assign custom keyboard and mouse functions to USB controllers. It works great and is fun to play now.
Star Wars Lethal Alliance (DS, playing on 3DS)
A third person action game with puzzle elements as you control Rianna Saren, a female twi'lek, and her droid companion, it's better in every way on PSP but this is an okay version of the game, easily one of the best games on DS at least.
C.O.P. The Recruit (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like the GTA Liberty City Stories of DS, a third person open city game, only not as good in any way, it's not bad though, another one of the best games on DS.
G.I. Joe The Rise of Cobra (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's like Loaded or ReLoaded with a G.I. Joe movie license, it's pretty good, yet another one of the best games on DS.
Project Rub (DS, playing on 3DS)
A minigame style game with lots of weird stuff, I don't know what to even think of it yet, it's very different.
The Rub Rabbits! (DS, playing on 3DS)
The virtually identical sequel to Project Rub. I still don't get it, if anything I'm more confused.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars (DS, playing on 3DS)
It's more visually interesting than the PSP port thanks to the cartoony celshaded style, but it plays worse due to the poor controls and all the touch screen shit you're forced to deal with, at least on PSP it was just QTE button stuff and as bad as that is I can at least live with it if it's short and not too frequent, but with motion controls such as poor touch screen controls I have a lot less patience and it really hurts the game, which is a shame as this is a good game otherwise.
Soleil (Mega Drive)
A clone of The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past.
Marvel Nemesis Rise of the Imperfects (DS, playing on 3DS)
A broken free-moving fighting game with some entertainment value. The AI is some of the worst I've ever seen but because of how extremely unbalanced the game is combined with how poorly it controls I'd say the AI being downright broken is what makes the game playable at all, if the opponent you were fighting had been smarter the game would've been unplayable with most characters as brute force very easily wins. On the flipside, playing as a character like Venom who is one of the most dangerous characters in the game, you can just wail on until you win against anyone you're up against, even technically more powerful opponents are easy to defeat because Venom isn't just overpowered, he also has very effective attacks that are easy and fast to pull off. So you can have a rather good time plowing through a few matches as Venom if you've had a bad day.
Visually it looks like a mid 90s PlayStation or Saturn budget title, the only good thing is that it allows the game to run smoothly and have rather big levels to fight on with some destructible scenery.
The character roster is quite good, with a nice and even mix of male and female characters, sadly it's a mixed bag of characters with only some being recognizable to anyone but the most avid Marvel fans. Personally I don't care much for Marvel, I like Scarlet Spider, Venom and Scream from the 90s Spider-Man comics as part of the clone saga, or whatever it's been called, I think I read that somewhere, and some of the characters in X-Men Evolution, that's it, so for me most of these characters are either completely unknown to me or characters I don't like or care for to begin with.
Sadly the clone saga and X-Men Evolution are not what this game is based on so none of the versions of those characters are in this, at best there are some versions of characters like Venom from Spider-Man and Storm from X-Men in this but they're just the basic-franchise-in-general versions of themselves, not from any specific series, at least as far as I can tell as someone who isn't a Marvel fan, it seems like it's closer to stuff like Pocket Fighter or Marvel Vs. Capcom or something, it's just a bunch of franchises thrown together to make a game with no deeper thought or plan to it.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Gaming Purchases - May 2017
May 4th:
Picked up the games I ordered online last week as they arrived today.
All games are used copies, complete with box and manual, unless otherwise stated.
V-Rally and Eagle One Harrier Attack are in a double pack with both games in one box.
Mega Drive:
Summer Challenge
Zero Tolerance
PlayStation:
Blast Radius (no manual)
Eagle One Harrier Attack
MTV Sports: Pure Ride
Star Trek Invasion
Street Racer
Truck Racing
V-Rally
Vagrant Story (promo disc, no manual)
PlayStation 2:
Hot Wheels World Race
Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums
Crashed
Crazy Frog Racer 2
Crazy Taxi
Motorsiege: Warriors of Primetime
Speed Kings
In the Crazy Taxi box there is a folder tucked in with the manual advertising other games from Acclaim (as they were the ones that ported Crazy Taxi to PS2), and among the games listed is Zombie Revenge for PS2 which sadly got cancelled worldwide before release. I sure would've loved a PS2 port now that I can't play it on Dreamcast anymore. I miss Zombie Revenge.
Teh update of an sadness:
The V-Rally disc is damaged on the data side of the disc and doesn't play. The other games all work fine, but damn, I really wanted to play V-Rally, I even warmed up for it by playing Sega Rally Championship on PC and Colin McRae Rally on PlayStation yesterday, getting myself into the proper mid-to-late 90s rally mood. Bummer. :c
Another update, semi-sad, semi-odd:
Seems MTV Sports Pure Ride also doesn't work.. on PS2. It works just fine on PS3 though. I've had the opposite happen many times as PS3 has really bad PSX emulation but for once it did it better than PS2 which has partial original PSX hardware in it, so how it's less compatible than a PS3 I dunno, it makes no sense.
Another update, really weird now:
V-Rally, with the literally see-through scratches on the disc, works on PS3 now... I'm literally playing V-Rally right now even though the disc is damaged beyond repair and shouldn't work at all. Am I in the Twilight Zone?
May 24th:
Picked up the games I ordered online last week as they arrived today.
All games are used copies, complete with box and manual, unless otherwise stated.
Because of how the copy of V-Rally I got earlier this month didn't work properly on my PS2, I ordered a separate copy now that I've tested out, and it works, so that's good at least.
I also ordered a separate copy of Eagle One Harrier Attack because I felt like it.
PlayStation:
Eagle One Harrier Attack
Formula One Arcade
Time Crisis Project Titan (promo disc, no manual)
V-Rally (Platinum)
V-Rally 2
WRC Arcade
PlayStation 2:
Kill.Switch (promo disc, no manual)
Picked up the games I ordered online last week as they arrived today.
All games are used copies, complete with box and manual, unless otherwise stated.
V-Rally and Eagle One Harrier Attack are in a double pack with both games in one box.
Mega Drive:
Summer Challenge
Zero Tolerance
PlayStation:
Blast Radius (no manual)
Eagle One Harrier Attack
MTV Sports: Pure Ride
Star Trek Invasion
Street Racer
Truck Racing
V-Rally
Vagrant Story (promo disc, no manual)
PlayStation 2:
Hot Wheels World Race
Carmen Sandiego: The Secret of the Stolen Drums
Crashed
Crazy Frog Racer 2
Crazy Taxi
Motorsiege: Warriors of Primetime
Speed Kings
In the Crazy Taxi box there is a folder tucked in with the manual advertising other games from Acclaim (as they were the ones that ported Crazy Taxi to PS2), and among the games listed is Zombie Revenge for PS2 which sadly got cancelled worldwide before release. I sure would've loved a PS2 port now that I can't play it on Dreamcast anymore. I miss Zombie Revenge.
Teh update of an sadness:
The V-Rally disc is damaged on the data side of the disc and doesn't play. The other games all work fine, but damn, I really wanted to play V-Rally, I even warmed up for it by playing Sega Rally Championship on PC and Colin McRae Rally on PlayStation yesterday, getting myself into the proper mid-to-late 90s rally mood. Bummer. :c
Another update, semi-sad, semi-odd:
Seems MTV Sports Pure Ride also doesn't work.. on PS2. It works just fine on PS3 though. I've had the opposite happen many times as PS3 has really bad PSX emulation but for once it did it better than PS2 which has partial original PSX hardware in it, so how it's less compatible than a PS3 I dunno, it makes no sense.
Another update, really weird now:
V-Rally, with the literally see-through scratches on the disc, works on PS3 now... I'm literally playing V-Rally right now even though the disc is damaged beyond repair and shouldn't work at all. Am I in the Twilight Zone?
May 24th:
Picked up the games I ordered online last week as they arrived today.
All games are used copies, complete with box and manual, unless otherwise stated.
Because of how the copy of V-Rally I got earlier this month didn't work properly on my PS2, I ordered a separate copy now that I've tested out, and it works, so that's good at least.
I also ordered a separate copy of Eagle One Harrier Attack because I felt like it.
PlayStation:
Eagle One Harrier Attack
Formula One Arcade
Time Crisis Project Titan (promo disc, no manual)
V-Rally (Platinum)
V-Rally 2
WRC Arcade
PlayStation 2:
Kill.Switch (promo disc, no manual)
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Now Playing - Maj 2017
Staring off this month with some rally games while waiting for the games I ordered near the end of April to arrive, also the daily dose of Smart As....
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Sega Rally Championship (PC)
It has speed issues on newer PCs so thankfully I found a patch with a frame capture program that hijacks the framerate and forces it to play at the correct speed, or at least as close to it at possible, and it works great for both the original version and the Direct3D enhanced version.
It's great fun and with the Lancia Stratos car and Lake Side track unlocked there's even more content to have fun with.
Three cars and four tracks is still less than what for example Virtua Racing Deluxe on 32X has, but it's a step up from the initial two cars and three tracks you begin with.
What's important in a rally game however is how it plays, and for one of the earliest 3D rally games ever made it plays great, the handling is intuitive and responsive and powersliding around corners feels very right. It has the benefit of being an arcade rally game rather than a purebred rally sim, so the gameplay has barely aged at all and it's still a treat to play as a direct result of this.
The early pixelated 3D visuals are charming, to the point where I actually find myself playing the original version more than the Direct3D enhanced version.
Colin McRae Rally (PlayStation)
Still a great game, if a bit dated by modern standards for rally sim games. It's got a nice selection of cars and lots of tracks to drive on, it handles very well with intuitive controls and has good driving physics for the time.
It has real-time dynamic damage modeling and a nice dynamic shadow similar to the shadows in Gran Turismo 3, Concept 2002 Tokyo-Geneva and 4 on PlayStation 2, making it look very nice at times.
Summer Challenge (Mega Drive)
The summer equivalent to Winter Challenge, with the same flat-shaded 3D graphics and similar events to play.
A rather typical button mashing and timing based gameplay type of sports game. One of the few types of sports games I kind of like, as long as they're not too awful. I like both Winter and Summer Challenge, the flat-shaded 3D polygonal visuals set them apart from all the rest and tugs very hard at my heartstrings, I love it.
Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
A 3D first person shooter in similar vain to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom but with a more open gameplay style where you can travel back to the previous levels to pick up health or ammo if there's any left to be found. It's got some really cool effects like blood splatters on the walls and drips down if you take out an enemy close enough, very nice. It's incredibly tough though, a very hard game. You select from a team of playable characters and when one dies you pick another until there are no more left.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Truck Racing (PlayStation)
A basic little budget truck racing game from Midas, it's lacking in content with only one truck model with a few different texture swaps and is singleplayer only, but it's got some really nice visuals overall, with high detail textures and a good amount of stuff on screen with a fair bit of draw distance all running at a high framerate, it also controls very well and is very fast, it's an arcade racer more than a sim racer, that's for sure. For a low budget game of that generation I think it does a good job.
Eagle One Harrier Attack (PlayStation)
An overlooked and underrated flight sim action game similar to the Ace Combat series, especially Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere, but you have a VTOL Harrier jump jet that can hover and strafe in mid air making it way more tactical and versatile than anything you got to pilot in Ace Combat 3.
I think there are other places to fly as well but i haven't gotten far into it yet to know for sure.
Street Racer (PlayStation)
A super-multiplatform kart racer released on Game Boy, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Saturn and Playstation.
It's nothing spectacular, just a solid kart racer from the mid 90s, but it's by Vivid Image, the same developer that would later make my all-time favorite kart racer S.C.A.R.S., so it's interesting to see some of their earlier attempts at the genre. I've played all the other versions except the Saturn one, which is similar to the PlayStation game but with less 3D geometry and more sprite-based stuff in the background instead, many consider the Saturn version to be the best of them all because of how much road-side stuff it has but I think the PlayStation version is good too and feels like the most next-gen version of them all, being the only one with proper 3D levels, even if they're a bit empty and barren compared to the Saturn version. Good game though and it has some cool stuff in it, even if it's a bit simplistic.
MTV Sports Pure Ride (PlayStation, playing on PlayStation 3)
Not the huge step up from the predecessor MTV Sports Snowboarding I was hoping for, but the snow texture is without a doubt the best I've seen from this generation and easily rivals and even beats most next-gen snowboard games.
It's mostly on par with the previous game in all other aspects, which is fine as that was a great game and remains my all-time favorite snowboard game, but it feels a bit too similar overall. If you have one, you don't need the other, they're both great and I'm glad to have them though.
Sadly the disc was damaged and didn't play properly on anything other than my PS3, which isn't the same thing as it emulates it and lacks the enhancements a PS2 offers when playing PSX games.
V-Rally (PlayStation, playing on PlayStation 3)
This one usually gets a bad rep for having strange controls, but honestly once you configure them to have the correct amount of over- or understeer and suspension setup it becomes just as playable and enjoyable as any other racing game. The driving physics are a little unique but it only takes a moment to get used to.
It's great looking for the time it was released and looks good still, and the physics engine is actually quite impressive, making for some spectacular crashes you'd never be able to see in Sega Rally or Colin McRae Rally, that's for sure.
It has a nice selection of cars that all have a unique feel and need to be adjusted with their own setup for all the different types of tracks to perform optimally, the tracks themselves are plenty and varied and there's a split-screen 2-player mode.
It was a popular game back in the day and a classic for us who remember it, sadly it's become very underrated as time's gone by, with most modern gamers not giving it a proper chance due to how it initially plays and handles, before you tweak the car settings, judging it by a quick test run and deeming it bad because they couldn't instantly control the car like a seasoned pro thinking it's automatically set up for them in advance, the spoiled little shits, but they're the ones who miss out on a great classic at the end of the day, so the joke's on them.
Sadly this disc was also damaged and didn't play properly on anything other than my PS3, just like MTV Pure Ride.
Crazy Taxi (PlayStation 2)
A flawless port of the Dreamcast version and I have no negatives to report, it's exactly how I remember it and since my Dreamcast is broken it's great to be able to play this on PS2.
Blast Radius (PlayStation)
A spaceship action sim game by the legendary Psygnosis, and it shows, sporting some of the best looking visuals on the system, as is usually the case with Psygnosis games, and it plays great with a high level of challenge, again nothing usual for their games. It's similar to most other great space games, like the Colony Wars series, Stellar Assault, G-Police, Star Trek Invasion and StarLancer.
You pick a ship, play through missions and upgrade the ship with upgrades you can buy with the credits you earn during the missions.
It looks great and runs silky smooth with really great controls making it easy to do enjoy dog fighting other spaceships in zero gravity, it's a treat to play and seems to be somewhat of a forgotten classic nowadays.
Vagrant Story (PlayStation)
A complex dungeon crawling semi-action RPG. Very unique, great looking and with good cinematography. The gameplay and battle system is a unique mix of real-time movement and RPG menus, kind of like a mix between Grandia, Granstream Saga, Koudelka and Parasite Eve, it's hard to explain without going into extreme detail, and I haven't played it enough yet to understand it all myself anyway, so even if I wanted to I couldn't, but you play as one character only and you fight enemies directly around you like an action game, there are no random battle encounters and enemies can be avoided entirely. There's a risk system where the higher the risk meter goes the more dangerous the game gets, as your character gets weaker, misses attacks more often and enemies can land critical hits on you a lot easier, so there's a lot to keep in mind and balance at the same time in this game. It's definitely not a game you jump into with ease, the learning curve is aimed at the most committed harcore gamers and everyone else is just gonna have to deal with it.
Crashed! (PlayStation 2)
A rather underwhelming Destruction Derby clone, sans racing. It controls fine and looks okay, it's a bit choppy due to bad 50hz conversion, but other than that it runs smooth enough.
You start with just two cars and a handful of arenas to play in, but I guess you can unlock more if you play more, there's so little to do to begin with and that sure as fuck isn't making me wanna play more, it's boring, I wanna have fun straight out of the box with a game like this, and this one is unusually locked down for the time it was released, other games had WAY more to offer, both initially and in total from what I've been able to make out from the back of the box and the manual.
The complete lack of any type of racing makes it even worse as I love Destruction Derby style racing.
It boasts about the most realistic damage physics engine ever on the back of the box, and while I think the deformation of the cars after crashing look pretty good there were still plenty of other games at that point, 2004, that were a lot more advanced and look a lot better in those regards, so I call bullshit on that claim.
Motorsiege Warriors of Primetime (PlayStation 2)
A vehicle combat game stating a bold "best vehicle combat game on PS2 yet" on the back of the box. I was of course hesitant to trust such boastful words, even if it is a 2003 game, especially when they were coming from a so called "leading games journalist" named Andy Roberts, who I could find nothing about when I searched for his name online.
The game also doesn't have any sex appeal despite having some other types of over-the-top designed characters, they even have vampires, but no sexy babes, the only female character in the game at all is and old granny, so it relies entirely on being a good game to play, an either very confident and well backed up decision or a very foolish one.
Thankfully I can report it plays great and is a lot of fun. The claim about being the best vehicle combat game on PS2 at the time may very well be true as at the time the only competitor I can recall is Twisted Metal Black really, which sucked ass here in Europe due to extreme censorship and total butchering of the game following the 2001 September 11th World Trade Center thing with the airplanes.
Anyway, you pick from an array of hovercars to use, there are several different play styles, ranging from classics such as deathmatch to team based events, and lots of different levels to pick from, and the weapons and other other pickups are scattered all over the levels and regenerate as you play.
It runs fast and smooth and looks good with a nice amount of detail and special effects with no popup and the levels you play in are huge in size.
There needs to be quite a lot of action on screen before the framerate gets a bit choppy, but it never gets too bad even at worst.
Sadly I've discovered some issues with the game that annoy me quite a bit, mainly the fact that the AI is completely retarded, like in team play your teammates will attack you at random when no enemies are around, and in general they seem to be confused about if you're on their team or not, more often than not strafing around you without shooting as if you look at you in a "Gee, I wonder if this guy is on our side or not?" kind of way, all while the actual enemies are also there attacking both you and the teammate idiots circling around you. There have also been some errors in the scoring after a game is won/lost with points going into the multi-billion negatives, keep in mind the game scores 100 points for a kill or a goal (there is a mode called Siege, similar to deathmatch/team deathmatch but with a ball you pick up and take to a goal that moves around after each score for added points) and you don't get negative points for killing yourself. or your teammates.
Regardless of the issues I think the good stuff is good enough to make up for it.
I've actually been interested in this game for ages but I never thought it seemed interesting enough in stores and there was little to no information about it online, so I sadly never bothered to buy a copy until now, and even now it was still a gamble as I still didn't know much about it.
Now that I finally have it, I'm glad I do.
Speed Kings (PlayStation 2)
A motorcycle racing game with stunt tricks and fighting, very similar to games like Road Rash and Mashed, it's smooth and fast with some minor stutter in the framerate when things get hectic crashing into traffic and other riders and such, looks nice and plays very well, if a bit wobbly at times.
Hot Wheels World Race (PlayStation 2)
A very nice futuristic combat racer similar to games like Extreme G, RollCage, Speed Racer and of course WipEout. Looks great, runs silky smooth, has great track design and the cars are based on some of the Hot Wheels toys at the time and I think the game ties in with an animated series but I haven't seen it so I can't verify that.
Crazy Frog Racer 2 (PlayStation 2)
Another futuristic racing game with weapon pickups, this one features the internet meme turned music video turned short-lived franchise and has a cast of characters, some new made for the games and some from the music videos, like "the annoying thing" crazy frog and the big red robot drone that chases the annoying thing.
It plays fairly well, it's fast and colorful and has a few different modes to play, along with a couple of minigames and the music videos for variation.
It's weird, the first music video is censored, the annoying thing's dick is visible in the original version but has a big blur over it now, but in the second video it's fully visible with no censorship at all, you can clearly see his dick.
I took a look online at what kind of scores this game had gotten and most gave it 2/10, I can honestly say it's far better than that, it is by no means a second worse possible type of game, I'd say it's even pretty good, especially considering what it originates from and the low expectations I had for it.
One of the other modes aside racing is a chase mode where you get chased by drones, like in the original music video, and see how far you can get, you take damage if you fall off the course or if the drones hit you with their weapons and traps.
The two minigames available is a dance game and a pinball game, th4e dancing game is very typical, just press the buttons at the right time to the rhythm of the song, I suck at it as always with rhythm games but I managed to beat the easy mode with a perfect score so I think for once a rhythm game has an easy mode that actually wasn't impossibly hard, so kudos for realizing not everyone is born with a natural sense of rhythm, I appreciate that. The pinball game is not your typical pinball though as there are no flippers, instead when the ball comes to a stop you have a few times that you can get it rolling again while an arrow rotates around it, time it right and you'll go where you want, the goal is to take out all the robot drones scattered around the pinball stage and there are walls and obstacles that slow you down as well as bumpers that make you go faster, I don't like pinball games in general but this was okay, not bad at all.
Carmen Sandiego The Secret of the Stolen Drums (PlayStation 2)
A rather mediocre action platformer where you play as Cole, a rookie ACME agent trying to hunt down and capture Carmen, turns out all the other agents have been fooled into looking for her in Siberia while Cole is right on her track on the other side of the world, and that's where the game begins, you sneak around, avoiding Carmen's robots and follow her tracks trying to catch her. I haven't gotten very far yet but the biggest problem are the controls, especially the camera, it also doesn't look very impressive, very bland and uninspired, the overall quality is similar to an old PlayStation game. The next place you visit is at least a bit better looking. This is the first Carmen Sandiego game I've ever played so I'm going into this with little to no bias about how it should be compared to the older games, just thought I'd mention that.
Star Trek Invasion (PlayStation)
A great spaceship action sim game and arguably the best Star Trek game ever made. It's like Blast Radius and the rest I mentioned earlier, only with a Star Trek license, with the voices of Picard and Worf and everything else you'd expect really. Apparently it's made by the same team that made the Colony Wars games and it uses the same game engine that Colony Wars Red Sun uses, so it's no wonder it looks and plays as great as it does.
Alone In The Dark Inferno (PlayStation 3)
Finally trying out the PS3 version of this game, it's said to be the best version because it was released later and had multiple things worked on a bit longer to make them less glitchy and stuff. I originally played through it on PS2 back in the day when it was new and more recently on Xbox 360, and while it's a flawed game for sure but it never got unplayable on either of those consoles in my opinion, so this should be good.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV Turtles In Time (Super Nintendo)
A port of the arcade game with some minor stuff added and some minor stuff removed, overall a good port.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)
Basically an alternative remixed version of Turtles In Time but with an arguably better story, faster and more responsive gameplay with better controls, with some additional exclusive content added and the time travel stuff, sprite scaling effects and mode-7 effects and levels removed.
This is my favorite version of the game as it adds stuff I like and removed stuff I didn't like as much.
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex (Xbox, playing on Xbox 360)
The original PlayStation 2 version is better than this, it has better lighting, better special effects, runs smoother and has better controls, the rest of the problems, I mean game, is still present however, with all the gameplay issues, level design issues, character design issues, enemy design issues, boss battle design issues, control issues, story issues and so on, it's all in here, made even worse by how it's a downgraded port of the PS2 game.
inFAMOUS (PlayStation 3)
It's literally a clunky Sly Cooper game with humans and ugly "realistic" visuals set in a bigger and slightly more expansive city environment, that's all that needs to be said really. The electric powers are okay but not utilized anywhere near as good as they should've been and work more like generic superpowers in general than specifically electrical powers. It's also glitchy as fuck in more ways than one. It can be fun to play but when the problems gang up on you it just sucks all the fun out of it and it becomes a frustrating experience instead.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
I ordered another copy of the regular Platinum version to play as the previous one I got didn't work properly, so it's all good now, this one works just fine and plays without issues. The reason I got the Platinum version again is because the original release of V-Rally didn't support Dual Shock and Dual Analog features and there's a new car added exclusively to the Platinum version.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
It's less like the original V-Rally and more like many next gen rally games on PS2 and Xbox like the several Colin McRae Rally sequels, the WRC series and RalliSport Challenge 1 and 2, but that's not a bad thing as those games are some of the best rally games out there.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Similar to V-Rally 2 it has more in common with next gen rally games like the rest of the WRC series than older ones like V-Rally or Sega Rally, despite being subtitled "Arcade" it's definitely a lot closer to being a regular rally sim. It's a bit hard to control compared to the other rally games I've been playing lately, with notably less grip in the cars' handling, making it near impossible not to slide into the walls in almost every single corner.
Formula One Arcade (PlayStation)
Essentially an F1 game with pickups like a kart racer, it's a little choppy in the framerate but that's the only real complaint.
Time Crisis Project Titan (PlayStation)
I don't have a lightgun and the controls weren't that great with a normal or Dual Shock controller when I tested it so I probably won't play this game much.
Kill.Switch (PlayStation 2)
The game that spawned the subgenre of third person shooters focused on cover-based gameplay that games like Gears of War then made popular several years later. It really feels like a modern third person shooter because of this, it's hard to imagine it came out in 2003 already. Namco did a great job with the gameplay mechanics.
Kill.Switch (Game Boy Advance)
Overall a very good port considering it's on such insanely weak hardware compared to the normal console version, it's in full textured 3D, it's a third person cover-based shooter and it runs well, the controls are a bit unconventional but they work well enough to get the job done.
Sega Rally Championship (Saturn)
It's actually better than the PC port in several ways, mostly minor graphical stuff but also sound effects and music.
Smart As... (PlayStation Vita)
The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (Nintendo 64)
Sega Rally Championship (PC)
It has speed issues on newer PCs so thankfully I found a patch with a frame capture program that hijacks the framerate and forces it to play at the correct speed, or at least as close to it at possible, and it works great for both the original version and the Direct3D enhanced version.
It's great fun and with the Lancia Stratos car and Lake Side track unlocked there's even more content to have fun with.
Three cars and four tracks is still less than what for example Virtua Racing Deluxe on 32X has, but it's a step up from the initial two cars and three tracks you begin with.
What's important in a rally game however is how it plays, and for one of the earliest 3D rally games ever made it plays great, the handling is intuitive and responsive and powersliding around corners feels very right. It has the benefit of being an arcade rally game rather than a purebred rally sim, so the gameplay has barely aged at all and it's still a treat to play as a direct result of this.
The early pixelated 3D visuals are charming, to the point where I actually find myself playing the original version more than the Direct3D enhanced version.
Colin McRae Rally (PlayStation)
Still a great game, if a bit dated by modern standards for rally sim games. It's got a nice selection of cars and lots of tracks to drive on, it handles very well with intuitive controls and has good driving physics for the time.
It has real-time dynamic damage modeling and a nice dynamic shadow similar to the shadows in Gran Turismo 3, Concept 2002 Tokyo-Geneva and 4 on PlayStation 2, making it look very nice at times.
Summer Challenge (Mega Drive)
The summer equivalent to Winter Challenge, with the same flat-shaded 3D graphics and similar events to play.
A rather typical button mashing and timing based gameplay type of sports game. One of the few types of sports games I kind of like, as long as they're not too awful. I like both Winter and Summer Challenge, the flat-shaded 3D polygonal visuals set them apart from all the rest and tugs very hard at my heartstrings, I love it.
Zero Tolerance (Mega Drive)
A 3D first person shooter in similar vain to Wolfenstein 3D and Doom but with a more open gameplay style where you can travel back to the previous levels to pick up health or ammo if there's any left to be found. It's got some really cool effects like blood splatters on the walls and drips down if you take out an enemy close enough, very nice. It's incredibly tough though, a very hard game. You select from a team of playable characters and when one dies you pick another until there are no more left.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Truck Racing (PlayStation)
A basic little budget truck racing game from Midas, it's lacking in content with only one truck model with a few different texture swaps and is singleplayer only, but it's got some really nice visuals overall, with high detail textures and a good amount of stuff on screen with a fair bit of draw distance all running at a high framerate, it also controls very well and is very fast, it's an arcade racer more than a sim racer, that's for sure. For a low budget game of that generation I think it does a good job.
Eagle One Harrier Attack (PlayStation)
An overlooked and underrated flight sim action game similar to the Ace Combat series, especially Ace Combat 3 Electrosphere, but you have a VTOL Harrier jump jet that can hover and strafe in mid air making it way more tactical and versatile than anything you got to pilot in Ace Combat 3.
I think there are other places to fly as well but i haven't gotten far into it yet to know for sure.
Street Racer (PlayStation)
A super-multiplatform kart racer released on Game Boy, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, Saturn and Playstation.
It's nothing spectacular, just a solid kart racer from the mid 90s, but it's by Vivid Image, the same developer that would later make my all-time favorite kart racer S.C.A.R.S., so it's interesting to see some of their earlier attempts at the genre. I've played all the other versions except the Saturn one, which is similar to the PlayStation game but with less 3D geometry and more sprite-based stuff in the background instead, many consider the Saturn version to be the best of them all because of how much road-side stuff it has but I think the PlayStation version is good too and feels like the most next-gen version of them all, being the only one with proper 3D levels, even if they're a bit empty and barren compared to the Saturn version. Good game though and it has some cool stuff in it, even if it's a bit simplistic.
MTV Sports Pure Ride (PlayStation, playing on PlayStation 3)
Not the huge step up from the predecessor MTV Sports Snowboarding I was hoping for, but the snow texture is without a doubt the best I've seen from this generation and easily rivals and even beats most next-gen snowboard games.
It's mostly on par with the previous game in all other aspects, which is fine as that was a great game and remains my all-time favorite snowboard game, but it feels a bit too similar overall. If you have one, you don't need the other, they're both great and I'm glad to have them though.
Sadly the disc was damaged and didn't play properly on anything other than my PS3, which isn't the same thing as it emulates it and lacks the enhancements a PS2 offers when playing PSX games.
V-Rally (PlayStation, playing on PlayStation 3)
This one usually gets a bad rep for having strange controls, but honestly once you configure them to have the correct amount of over- or understeer and suspension setup it becomes just as playable and enjoyable as any other racing game. The driving physics are a little unique but it only takes a moment to get used to.
It's great looking for the time it was released and looks good still, and the physics engine is actually quite impressive, making for some spectacular crashes you'd never be able to see in Sega Rally or Colin McRae Rally, that's for sure.
It has a nice selection of cars that all have a unique feel and need to be adjusted with their own setup for all the different types of tracks to perform optimally, the tracks themselves are plenty and varied and there's a split-screen 2-player mode.
It was a popular game back in the day and a classic for us who remember it, sadly it's become very underrated as time's gone by, with most modern gamers not giving it a proper chance due to how it initially plays and handles, before you tweak the car settings, judging it by a quick test run and deeming it bad because they couldn't instantly control the car like a seasoned pro thinking it's automatically set up for them in advance, the spoiled little shits, but they're the ones who miss out on a great classic at the end of the day, so the joke's on them.
Sadly this disc was also damaged and didn't play properly on anything other than my PS3, just like MTV Pure Ride.
Crazy Taxi (PlayStation 2)
A flawless port of the Dreamcast version and I have no negatives to report, it's exactly how I remember it and since my Dreamcast is broken it's great to be able to play this on PS2.
Blast Radius (PlayStation)
A spaceship action sim game by the legendary Psygnosis, and it shows, sporting some of the best looking visuals on the system, as is usually the case with Psygnosis games, and it plays great with a high level of challenge, again nothing usual for their games. It's similar to most other great space games, like the Colony Wars series, Stellar Assault, G-Police, Star Trek Invasion and StarLancer.
You pick a ship, play through missions and upgrade the ship with upgrades you can buy with the credits you earn during the missions.
It looks great and runs silky smooth with really great controls making it easy to do enjoy dog fighting other spaceships in zero gravity, it's a treat to play and seems to be somewhat of a forgotten classic nowadays.
Vagrant Story (PlayStation)
A complex dungeon crawling semi-action RPG. Very unique, great looking and with good cinematography. The gameplay and battle system is a unique mix of real-time movement and RPG menus, kind of like a mix between Grandia, Granstream Saga, Koudelka and Parasite Eve, it's hard to explain without going into extreme detail, and I haven't played it enough yet to understand it all myself anyway, so even if I wanted to I couldn't, but you play as one character only and you fight enemies directly around you like an action game, there are no random battle encounters and enemies can be avoided entirely. There's a risk system where the higher the risk meter goes the more dangerous the game gets, as your character gets weaker, misses attacks more often and enemies can land critical hits on you a lot easier, so there's a lot to keep in mind and balance at the same time in this game. It's definitely not a game you jump into with ease, the learning curve is aimed at the most committed harcore gamers and everyone else is just gonna have to deal with it.
Crashed! (PlayStation 2)
A rather underwhelming Destruction Derby clone, sans racing. It controls fine and looks okay, it's a bit choppy due to bad 50hz conversion, but other than that it runs smooth enough.
You start with just two cars and a handful of arenas to play in, but I guess you can unlock more if you play more, there's so little to do to begin with and that sure as fuck isn't making me wanna play more, it's boring, I wanna have fun straight out of the box with a game like this, and this one is unusually locked down for the time it was released, other games had WAY more to offer, both initially and in total from what I've been able to make out from the back of the box and the manual.
The complete lack of any type of racing makes it even worse as I love Destruction Derby style racing.
It boasts about the most realistic damage physics engine ever on the back of the box, and while I think the deformation of the cars after crashing look pretty good there were still plenty of other games at that point, 2004, that were a lot more advanced and look a lot better in those regards, so I call bullshit on that claim.
Motorsiege Warriors of Primetime (PlayStation 2)
A vehicle combat game stating a bold "best vehicle combat game on PS2 yet" on the back of the box. I was of course hesitant to trust such boastful words, even if it is a 2003 game, especially when they were coming from a so called "leading games journalist" named Andy Roberts, who I could find nothing about when I searched for his name online.
The game also doesn't have any sex appeal despite having some other types of over-the-top designed characters, they even have vampires, but no sexy babes, the only female character in the game at all is and old granny, so it relies entirely on being a good game to play, an either very confident and well backed up decision or a very foolish one.
Thankfully I can report it plays great and is a lot of fun. The claim about being the best vehicle combat game on PS2 at the time may very well be true as at the time the only competitor I can recall is Twisted Metal Black really, which sucked ass here in Europe due to extreme censorship and total butchering of the game following the 2001 September 11th World Trade Center thing with the airplanes.
Anyway, you pick from an array of hovercars to use, there are several different play styles, ranging from classics such as deathmatch to team based events, and lots of different levels to pick from, and the weapons and other other pickups are scattered all over the levels and regenerate as you play.
It runs fast and smooth and looks good with a nice amount of detail and special effects with no popup and the levels you play in are huge in size.
There needs to be quite a lot of action on screen before the framerate gets a bit choppy, but it never gets too bad even at worst.
Sadly I've discovered some issues with the game that annoy me quite a bit, mainly the fact that the AI is completely retarded, like in team play your teammates will attack you at random when no enemies are around, and in general they seem to be confused about if you're on their team or not, more often than not strafing around you without shooting as if you look at you in a "Gee, I wonder if this guy is on our side or not?" kind of way, all while the actual enemies are also there attacking both you and the teammate idiots circling around you. There have also been some errors in the scoring after a game is won/lost with points going into the multi-billion negatives, keep in mind the game scores 100 points for a kill or a goal (there is a mode called Siege, similar to deathmatch/team deathmatch but with a ball you pick up and take to a goal that moves around after each score for added points) and you don't get negative points for killing yourself. or your teammates.
Regardless of the issues I think the good stuff is good enough to make up for it.
I've actually been interested in this game for ages but I never thought it seemed interesting enough in stores and there was little to no information about it online, so I sadly never bothered to buy a copy until now, and even now it was still a gamble as I still didn't know much about it.
Now that I finally have it, I'm glad I do.
Speed Kings (PlayStation 2)
A motorcycle racing game with stunt tricks and fighting, very similar to games like Road Rash and Mashed, it's smooth and fast with some minor stutter in the framerate when things get hectic crashing into traffic and other riders and such, looks nice and plays very well, if a bit wobbly at times.
Hot Wheels World Race (PlayStation 2)
A very nice futuristic combat racer similar to games like Extreme G, RollCage, Speed Racer and of course WipEout. Looks great, runs silky smooth, has great track design and the cars are based on some of the Hot Wheels toys at the time and I think the game ties in with an animated series but I haven't seen it so I can't verify that.
Crazy Frog Racer 2 (PlayStation 2)
Another futuristic racing game with weapon pickups, this one features the internet meme turned music video turned short-lived franchise and has a cast of characters, some new made for the games and some from the music videos, like "the annoying thing" crazy frog and the big red robot drone that chases the annoying thing.
It plays fairly well, it's fast and colorful and has a few different modes to play, along with a couple of minigames and the music videos for variation.
It's weird, the first music video is censored, the annoying thing's dick is visible in the original version but has a big blur over it now, but in the second video it's fully visible with no censorship at all, you can clearly see his dick.
I took a look online at what kind of scores this game had gotten and most gave it 2/10, I can honestly say it's far better than that, it is by no means a second worse possible type of game, I'd say it's even pretty good, especially considering what it originates from and the low expectations I had for it.
One of the other modes aside racing is a chase mode where you get chased by drones, like in the original music video, and see how far you can get, you take damage if you fall off the course or if the drones hit you with their weapons and traps.
The two minigames available is a dance game and a pinball game, th4e dancing game is very typical, just press the buttons at the right time to the rhythm of the song, I suck at it as always with rhythm games but I managed to beat the easy mode with a perfect score so I think for once a rhythm game has an easy mode that actually wasn't impossibly hard, so kudos for realizing not everyone is born with a natural sense of rhythm, I appreciate that. The pinball game is not your typical pinball though as there are no flippers, instead when the ball comes to a stop you have a few times that you can get it rolling again while an arrow rotates around it, time it right and you'll go where you want, the goal is to take out all the robot drones scattered around the pinball stage and there are walls and obstacles that slow you down as well as bumpers that make you go faster, I don't like pinball games in general but this was okay, not bad at all.
Carmen Sandiego The Secret of the Stolen Drums (PlayStation 2)
A rather mediocre action platformer where you play as Cole, a rookie ACME agent trying to hunt down and capture Carmen, turns out all the other agents have been fooled into looking for her in Siberia while Cole is right on her track on the other side of the world, and that's where the game begins, you sneak around, avoiding Carmen's robots and follow her tracks trying to catch her. I haven't gotten very far yet but the biggest problem are the controls, especially the camera, it also doesn't look very impressive, very bland and uninspired, the overall quality is similar to an old PlayStation game. The next place you visit is at least a bit better looking. This is the first Carmen Sandiego game I've ever played so I'm going into this with little to no bias about how it should be compared to the older games, just thought I'd mention that.
Star Trek Invasion (PlayStation)
A great spaceship action sim game and arguably the best Star Trek game ever made. It's like Blast Radius and the rest I mentioned earlier, only with a Star Trek license, with the voices of Picard and Worf and everything else you'd expect really. Apparently it's made by the same team that made the Colony Wars games and it uses the same game engine that Colony Wars Red Sun uses, so it's no wonder it looks and plays as great as it does.
Alone In The Dark Inferno (PlayStation 3)
Finally trying out the PS3 version of this game, it's said to be the best version because it was released later and had multiple things worked on a bit longer to make them less glitchy and stuff. I originally played through it on PS2 back in the day when it was new and more recently on Xbox 360, and while it's a flawed game for sure but it never got unplayable on either of those consoles in my opinion, so this should be good.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV Turtles In Time (Super Nintendo)
A port of the arcade game with some minor stuff added and some minor stuff removed, overall a good port.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Hyperstone Heist (Mega Drive)
Basically an alternative remixed version of Turtles In Time but with an arguably better story, faster and more responsive gameplay with better controls, with some additional exclusive content added and the time travel stuff, sprite scaling effects and mode-7 effects and levels removed.
This is my favorite version of the game as it adds stuff I like and removed stuff I didn't like as much.
Crash Bandicoot The Wrath of Cortex (Xbox, playing on Xbox 360)
The original PlayStation 2 version is better than this, it has better lighting, better special effects, runs smoother and has better controls, the rest of the problems, I mean game, is still present however, with all the gameplay issues, level design issues, character design issues, enemy design issues, boss battle design issues, control issues, story issues and so on, it's all in here, made even worse by how it's a downgraded port of the PS2 game.
inFAMOUS (PlayStation 3)
It's literally a clunky Sly Cooper game with humans and ugly "realistic" visuals set in a bigger and slightly more expansive city environment, that's all that needs to be said really. The electric powers are okay but not utilized anywhere near as good as they should've been and work more like generic superpowers in general than specifically electrical powers. It's also glitchy as fuck in more ways than one. It can be fun to play but when the problems gang up on you it just sucks all the fun out of it and it becomes a frustrating experience instead.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
I ordered another copy of the regular Platinum version to play as the previous one I got didn't work properly, so it's all good now, this one works just fine and plays without issues. The reason I got the Platinum version again is because the original release of V-Rally didn't support Dual Shock and Dual Analog features and there's a new car added exclusively to the Platinum version.
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
It's less like the original V-Rally and more like many next gen rally games on PS2 and Xbox like the several Colin McRae Rally sequels, the WRC series and RalliSport Challenge 1 and 2, but that's not a bad thing as those games are some of the best rally games out there.
WRC Arcade (PlayStation)
Similar to V-Rally 2 it has more in common with next gen rally games like the rest of the WRC series than older ones like V-Rally or Sega Rally, despite being subtitled "Arcade" it's definitely a lot closer to being a regular rally sim. It's a bit hard to control compared to the other rally games I've been playing lately, with notably less grip in the cars' handling, making it near impossible not to slide into the walls in almost every single corner.
Formula One Arcade (PlayStation)
Essentially an F1 game with pickups like a kart racer, it's a little choppy in the framerate but that's the only real complaint.
Time Crisis Project Titan (PlayStation)
I don't have a lightgun and the controls weren't that great with a normal or Dual Shock controller when I tested it so I probably won't play this game much.
Kill.Switch (PlayStation 2)
The game that spawned the subgenre of third person shooters focused on cover-based gameplay that games like Gears of War then made popular several years later. It really feels like a modern third person shooter because of this, it's hard to imagine it came out in 2003 already. Namco did a great job with the gameplay mechanics.
Kill.Switch (Game Boy Advance)
Overall a very good port considering it's on such insanely weak hardware compared to the normal console version, it's in full textured 3D, it's a third person cover-based shooter and it runs well, the controls are a bit unconventional but they work well enough to get the job done.
Sega Rally Championship (Saturn)
It's actually better than the PC port in several ways, mostly minor graphical stuff but also sound effects and music.
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