May 5th:
Went to a Retro Game Convention in Gothenburg with some friends and bought some neat stuff. I bought one cartridge of Space Battle for Intellivision, but then later found a cheaper one with the overlays and manual laying in a big box of random stuff, so I bought that copy too! There were no refunds, so yeah, simple as that. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
IntelliVision:
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (cartridge only)
Tron Deadly Discs (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge only)
Space Battle (cartridge, two controller overlays and manual)
Star Strike (cartridge only)
Mega Drive:
Abrams Battle Tank (cartridge only)
MIG-29 Fighter Pilot (cartridge only)
32X:
Cosmic Carnage (cartridge only)
DS:
Asphalt Urban GT (no instruction manual)
Collectibles:
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version with keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Princess Daisy - Super Mario Super Size Figure Collection (version without keyring hanger, new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Vitzh 1st-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Steel Battalion - Lycoming Defense Systems Quasar 3rd-Generation - Capcom Figure Collection (new and sealed)
Other:
Virtua Racing (Mega Drive) rental case
Tomb Raider (Saturn) instruction manual
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May 12th:
One of my friends who was with me to the Retro Game Convention a week ago had bought a game he didn't like, so he gave it to me.
Mega Drive:
688 Attack Sub (cartridge only)
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May 14th:
A trip to the local GameStop resulted in some nice finds today. (all items are pre-owned unless otherwise noted)
Hardware:
AtGames SEGA Mega Drive Plug N Play with 81 built-in games, cartridge slot, power adapter, stereo composite AV-cables and two 6-button controllers (new and complete in box)
PlayStation 3:
Battleship
BlazBlue Continuum Shift Extend
Dead Rising 2
EyeCreate
Far Cry 3
God of War Ascension
Valkyria Chronicles
PlayStation Vita:
Dynasty Warriors Next (no instruction manual)
Xbox 360:
BlazBlue Continuum Shift - Limited Edition (no instruction manual)
Dead Island Riptide - Special Edition
F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin
Grand Theft Auto V Five (no instruction manual)
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Prey
Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008
Star Wars The Clone Wars Republic Heroes
Collectibles:
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Cars 2 - Holley Shiftwell (figure only)
Disney Infinity 3.0 - Star Wars - Ahsoka Tano (figure only)
Skylanders Imaginators - Golden Queen (figure only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Hot Streak (vehicle only)
Skylanders Superchargers - Jet Stream (vehicle only)
Skylanders Swap Force - Ninja Stealth Elf (figure only)
Totaku WipEout Feisar FX350 (new and sealed)
Totaku WipEout AG-SYS (new and sealed)
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May 17th:
Took a long walk today and bought some stuff along the way.
Collectibles:
3x Marvel Avengers Black Widow Hasbro action figure (2016, new and sealed)
DVD:
Dumb and Dumber Unrated (1994, new and sealed)
Bluray:
Monster High Clawesome Double Feature (2014, Monster High Fright On! (2011), Monster High Escape from Skull Shores (2012), new and sealed)
Penguins of Madagascar (2014, new and sealed)
Robocop (2013, new and sealed)
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May 22nd:
Ordered some games online during a 20th anniversary sale that Discshop.se was having. Got every game for only 20kr each, all new and sealed.
UPDATE: the order arrived and I went and picked it up the next day, May 23rd
PlayStation 3:
Battlefield 4
Borderlands 2 - The Premiere Club Edition
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
Rage - Anarchy Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Xbox 360:
Battlefield 4
Duke Nukem Forever - Duke's Kick Ass Edition
Medal of Honor Warfighter - Limited Edition
Prototype 2 - Limited! Radnet Edition
XCOM Enemy Unknown - Elite Soldier Pack Edition
Showing posts with label Mega Drive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mega Drive. Show all posts
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Friday, February 1, 2019
Now Playing - Februari 2019
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game, it's a good game even if it's a bit small. The problems are frustrating at times but the fun you can have make up for them enough.
played some demos that were already on the PS3 Slim I bought, the two I tried out were Eufloria and Urban Trial Freestyle, both were good
Killzone HD (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game. Still my favorite in the series, though Mercenary on Vita is really fantastic too and I will play that again soon as well.
Shadow Fall on PS4 is another great one but I don't have a PS4 to play it on right now.
Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3)
trying it out, it's a LOT glitchier than I remember, but the extreme amount of invisible walls all over the place keeping you from exploring even a tiny amount are just as plentiful and claustrophobic as I remember, also I had forgotten you could carry less weapons than in the original Killzone, you can hold literally just one single weapon of choice, beise that you have a permagun with infinite ammo and grenades, if you want ANY other weapon than the one you already picked up you're gonna have to swap that one for the new one no matter how much you don't wanna drag that infinite pea shooting pistol around, no exceptions, ever, it sucks! This was a very big drop down from the quality of the original game on PS2, the only real upgrades are minor visual things like the polygonal detail, some special effects like bump maps and lens flares etc., higher screen resolution, bigger color depth and better framerates, but textures are actually much lower res than were in the original on PS2, so it's not all better (it fucking should be!).
Also the ability to play as different characters by choice (after they were unlocked) is gone as well, this really sucks as I loved being able to replay levels as the different characters to see what different paths they took and what they got to do when I was doing my thing elsewhere last time.
EyeCreate (PlayStation 3)
recorded some silly things
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
started a new game
Superstars Racing V8 (PlayStation 3)
SuperCar Challenge (PlayStation 3)
BAJA Edge of Control (PlayStation 3)
Columns (Master System)
Columns (Game Gear)
Columns (Mega Drive)
Total Carnage (Midway Arcade Origins, PlayStation 3)
played through it, got bad ending, not a great game to be honest, unbalanced and focused far too much to steal your money by artificially making it frustrating and unfairly hard, doesn't flow well at all, extremely repetitive, stiff and slow controls, it has some good visuals but that's about it
Loaded (PlayStation)
Tomb Raider Legend (Tomb Raider Trilogy, PlayStation 3)
Finally got to playing this and so far it's not very good, some visual problems with the new lighting and shadows engine are very apparent and don't look good at all and there have been some odd control glitches where stuff happens without me pressing anything, grandes have been tossed and weapon changes have happened mid combat when all I was doing was moving in a single direction and shooting with default guns normally, no other buttons being pressed, very annoying. It also seems to have missed some of the treasures I know for a fact I picked up, I had to replay Lara's Mansion 5 times already to pick up the same damn treasure it kept ignoring when I picked it up.
I'll see it through to the end though as I know this game very well having played through most versions of it over the years. Not a good start though, not good at all, so far it's the worst port of this version of the game I've played, not counting the GBA or DS versions as they are not ports of this version but entirely different games made from the ground up for both those systems respectively.
Started a new game, it's a good game even if it's a bit small. The problems are frustrating at times but the fun you can have make up for them enough.
played some demos that were already on the PS3 Slim I bought, the two I tried out were Eufloria and Urban Trial Freestyle, both were good
Killzone HD (PlayStation 3)
Started a new game. Still my favorite in the series, though Mercenary on Vita is really fantastic too and I will play that again soon as well.
Shadow Fall on PS4 is another great one but I don't have a PS4 to play it on right now.
Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3)
trying it out, it's a LOT glitchier than I remember, but the extreme amount of invisible walls all over the place keeping you from exploring even a tiny amount are just as plentiful and claustrophobic as I remember, also I had forgotten you could carry less weapons than in the original Killzone, you can hold literally just one single weapon of choice, beise that you have a permagun with infinite ammo and grenades, if you want ANY other weapon than the one you already picked up you're gonna have to swap that one for the new one no matter how much you don't wanna drag that infinite pea shooting pistol around, no exceptions, ever, it sucks! This was a very big drop down from the quality of the original game on PS2, the only real upgrades are minor visual things like the polygonal detail, some special effects like bump maps and lens flares etc., higher screen resolution, bigger color depth and better framerates, but textures are actually much lower res than were in the original on PS2, so it's not all better (it fucking should be!).
Also the ability to play as different characters by choice (after they were unlocked) is gone as well, this really sucks as I loved being able to replay levels as the different characters to see what different paths they took and what they got to do when I was doing my thing elsewhere last time.
EyeCreate (PlayStation 3)
recorded some silly things
Sly Cooper Thieves in Time (PlayStation 3)
started a new game
Superstars Racing V8 (PlayStation 3)
SuperCar Challenge (PlayStation 3)
BAJA Edge of Control (PlayStation 3)
Columns (Master System)
Columns (Game Gear)
Columns (Mega Drive)
Total Carnage (Midway Arcade Origins, PlayStation 3)
played through it, got bad ending, not a great game to be honest, unbalanced and focused far too much to steal your money by artificially making it frustrating and unfairly hard, doesn't flow well at all, extremely repetitive, stiff and slow controls, it has some good visuals but that's about it
Loaded (PlayStation)
Tomb Raider Legend (Tomb Raider Trilogy, PlayStation 3)
Finally got to playing this and so far it's not very good, some visual problems with the new lighting and shadows engine are very apparent and don't look good at all and there have been some odd control glitches where stuff happens without me pressing anything, grandes have been tossed and weapon changes have happened mid combat when all I was doing was moving in a single direction and shooting with default guns normally, no other buttons being pressed, very annoying. It also seems to have missed some of the treasures I know for a fact I picked up, I had to replay Lara's Mansion 5 times already to pick up the same damn treasure it kept ignoring when I picked it up.
I'll see it through to the end though as I know this game very well having played through most versions of it over the years. Not a good start though, not good at all, so far it's the worst port of this version of the game I've played, not counting the GBA or DS versions as they are not ports of this version but entirely different games made from the ground up for both those systems respectively.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Now Playing - Januari 2019
CastleVania Symphony of the Night (PlayStation, played on PlayStation Portable)
created a new game file for my annual playthrough of 2019, calling it "MM X IX"
Shinobi (3DS)
playing around a bit in the free play mode with some of the unlockable cheats, it's definitely better but you're still limited to what you've unlocked in the normal mode, so it's not a lot to have fun with until you've suffered through til the end of the main mode and at least unlocked all the levels to free play in
Rouge The Bat in Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
A homebrew hack/mod of Sonic The Hedgehog that replaces Sonic with Rouge, fully custom adapted with her own graphics, new unique moves and abilities.
New favorite game of all time? Nah, it'd need an official version and physical release and preferably a new game to go with the new stuff this one has in it, but for what it is, a hack of the original Sonic game, it's exceptionally well made and I love it. As a Rouge fan this is one of the best games I've ever played for sure.
Wacky Races (Mega Drive, emulated prototype ROM)
Easily the best kart racer of the 16-bit generation in the things it gets right, with just a little bit more tweaking and some other minor things it would've been perfect, sadly it was never finished and remains only available as an unreleased prototype ROM, but wow what a prototype, it has FMV, polygonal graphics, excellent sprite quality, lots of high quality animation and tons of high quality sample based audio and on top of it all it plays with a good framerate and high speed, the controls are a bit of a mixed bag but they are functional and better than some games that did get released, so there was great potential in close reach.
It's easily one of the most technically impressive games of the 16-bit generation, and that says a thing or two when you look at some of the best competition for technical achievements that generation had.
Beam Rider (Intellivision)
A very good space shooter with a 3D viewpoint.
The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
Trying it out on my newly purchased PS3 Slim while also testing the controllers I got for it, all works well, had to safe mode reset it to work though as it was set up for HDMI display so I got no image or sound on my old SDTV at first, thankfully it's easy to do, just hold the power button down until you hear a second beep and it's pretty much done and you can play as normal.
Had to start a new game of course, but I haven't played the game in so long that I was planning on starting over anyway as my old save file from 2015 on my Super Slim is so old now that I don't even remember where I was, I think Fall, but more than that I dunno, I just know I hadn't gotten to Winter yet, at least.
Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (PlayStation 3)
Finally getting into this game, it's pretty good so far, it looks good, plays smoothly, worst thing has been that a lot of side paths and stuff to pick up is missable so extremely easily, so now already I have to go back and redo stuff from all the way back from the beginning of the game as you're not allowed to backtrack in the levels at all, they're linear and almost every step forward blocks your ability to go back even a single room or area, very annoying when you know there was more stuff back there if only you could open that door again that was open without any issues just a second ago or jump back on the platform just over there where you should easily be able to reach, but no, they're permanently blocked off unless you restart the whole level from the start, I really hate that, it makes the levels feel far less impressive and open, they look big and open ended but it's literally just a pretty corridor.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
Cool Boarders (PlayStation)
It's been a long time since I played this one, it's still one of the best snowboarding games ever, easy to get into, fun to play.
Super Sprint (as part of Midway Arcade Origins, played on PlayStation 3)
Spent a few hours getting over 257000 points, it gets repetitive after a while and the emulation is not perfect, but it's enjoyable enough for a gameplay session from time to time.
created a new game file for my annual playthrough of 2019, calling it "MM X IX"
Shinobi (3DS)
playing around a bit in the free play mode with some of the unlockable cheats, it's definitely better but you're still limited to what you've unlocked in the normal mode, so it's not a lot to have fun with until you've suffered through til the end of the main mode and at least unlocked all the levels to free play in
Rouge The Bat in Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
A homebrew hack/mod of Sonic The Hedgehog that replaces Sonic with Rouge, fully custom adapted with her own graphics, new unique moves and abilities.
New favorite game of all time? Nah, it'd need an official version and physical release and preferably a new game to go with the new stuff this one has in it, but for what it is, a hack of the original Sonic game, it's exceptionally well made and I love it. As a Rouge fan this is one of the best games I've ever played for sure.
Wacky Races (Mega Drive, emulated prototype ROM)
Easily the best kart racer of the 16-bit generation in the things it gets right, with just a little bit more tweaking and some other minor things it would've been perfect, sadly it was never finished and remains only available as an unreleased prototype ROM, but wow what a prototype, it has FMV, polygonal graphics, excellent sprite quality, lots of high quality animation and tons of high quality sample based audio and on top of it all it plays with a good framerate and high speed, the controls are a bit of a mixed bag but they are functional and better than some games that did get released, so there was great potential in close reach.
It's easily one of the most technically impressive games of the 16-bit generation, and that says a thing or two when you look at some of the best competition for technical achievements that generation had.
Beam Rider (Intellivision)
A very good space shooter with a 3D viewpoint.
The Last of Us (PlayStation 3)
Trying it out on my newly purchased PS3 Slim while also testing the controllers I got for it, all works well, had to safe mode reset it to work though as it was set up for HDMI display so I got no image or sound on my old SDTV at first, thankfully it's easy to do, just hold the power button down until you hear a second beep and it's pretty much done and you can play as normal.
Had to start a new game of course, but I haven't played the game in so long that I was planning on starting over anyway as my old save file from 2015 on my Super Slim is so old now that I don't even remember where I was, I think Fall, but more than that I dunno, I just know I hadn't gotten to Winter yet, at least.
Ratchet & Clank Tools of Destruction (PlayStation 3)
Finally getting into this game, it's pretty good so far, it looks good, plays smoothly, worst thing has been that a lot of side paths and stuff to pick up is missable so extremely easily, so now already I have to go back and redo stuff from all the way back from the beginning of the game as you're not allowed to backtrack in the levels at all, they're linear and almost every step forward blocks your ability to go back even a single room or area, very annoying when you know there was more stuff back there if only you could open that door again that was open without any issues just a second ago or jump back on the platform just over there where you should easily be able to reach, but no, they're permanently blocked off unless you restart the whole level from the start, I really hate that, it makes the levels feel far less impressive and open, they look big and open ended but it's literally just a pretty corridor.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
Cool Boarders (PlayStation)
It's been a long time since I played this one, it's still one of the best snowboarding games ever, easy to get into, fun to play.
Super Sprint (as part of Midway Arcade Origins, played on PlayStation 3)
Spent a few hours getting over 257000 points, it gets repetitive after a while and the emulation is not perfect, but it's enjoyable enough for a gameplay session from time to time.
Thursday, November 1, 2018
Now Playing - November 2018
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Mega Drive)
Auto Racing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
It's still not as good as the real thing but it's still good enough to have some fun with.
Bomb Squad (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one is borderline unplayable, the heavy use of the numeric keypad and bad control emulation ruins a lot of the intuitive nature of the game and like most games on this disc the lack of proper instructions makes it so you have to look up extra stuff online to get a good idea what to even do.
Thankfully I already know how to play most these games properly but for others who want to get into Intellivision are gonna have a very hard time with this collection, sadly. It does not show off the awesomeness of the real games running on original hardware, that's for sure.
Skiing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Enduro (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one I am not so familiar with, but I'm trying to get the hang of it, I'm getting better.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sadly they've just lazily taken the 60hz NTSC roms and slowed them down to play at 50hz for this collection, so the games run and sound slow and weird, far from the real 50hz PAL original versions on original hardware.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
WRC Rally Evolved (PlayStation 2)
A really great rally game with some cool extreme weather effects and stuff, kinda similar to games like Motorstorm Apocalypse or Split/Second.
WRC 4 (PlayStation 2)
A great rally game, it's basically like WRC Rally Evolved but focused on regular rally racing only. Both are great games.
Rally Championship (PlayStation 2)
A fantastic arcade rally game, I love the driving physics, the music is awesome, this may be a new contender for the best [arcade] rally game I've ever played. I can't seem to wipe off the huge dumb grin I get on my face when playing this.
Jet Ion GP (PlayStation 2)
A nostalgic classic for me, I think it was the third or possibly fourth game I got for my PS2 back in the day.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
I got this game less than a year ago but originally I could've gotten it instead of Jet Ion GP.
Now finally I've been able to compare both side by side and truly see if I made the right choice when I picked Jet Ion GP over New York Race all those years ago.
I have to say yes, I made the right choice, as good as New York Race is, I like Jet Ion GP better. I'm glad to finally have both though.
Sonic CD (Sonic Gems Collection, PlayStation 2)
Beat is with the bad ending but I did probably my personal best run ever, with only having lost one life during the whole playthrough, obtaining 5 of the time stones and getting the good future in I think 8 or 9 stages.
Sonic Unleashed (PlayStation 2)
This game is awful.
It's the same version that is on Wii so I can't even imagine how bad that one must be if it's this game with broken motion controls..
I have the Xbox 360 version, which is different from the PS2/Wii versions, but I haven't played that one yet. I'm guessing it's probably really awful as well, maybe not quite as bad as this one but still really bad, I have no reason to think they made it better in any way that counts, the atrocious Sonic Generations I have on Xbox 360 has made sure I can exclusively assume the very worst of all modern Sonic games.
As a side note, anyone who dares complain about even a single tiny little thing about Sonic 06 needs to play this (and/or Sonic Generations) to see what truly bad Sonic games are like, then they need to beg on their bare knees to Sonic 06 for forgiveness.
Crash of the Titans (PlayStation 2)
I didn't have much hope for this being good but it suprised me, in fact it's one of the better 3D platformers I've played.
Good visuals, good gameplay, good controls, good level design, very good multilingual voice acting.
The combat could've been a bit better in the responsiveness and control, but the ability to take over large enemies and use their abilities adds a nice variety and depth to the combat and gameplay of the entire game, so overall that's all still good too.
Offroad Extreme! (PlayStation 2)
I have this on Wii and played it a few years ago, it was pretty bad with the visuals and framerate but I remember it having really responsive and accurate motion controls, far better than any other Wii game in fact, and now I've tried out the PS2 version and can safely say the framerate, visuals and controls are all much better than in the Wii version, as good as the Wii version's controls are they are to no suprise infinitely better with an analog stick, and the visuals actually look okay in this, still low budget looking but they run silky smooth and the environments and textures don't look weird like they did on Wii.
Simply put, the PS2 version is clearly superior in every way to the newer Wii version, and keep in mind that Wii had a more than twice as powerful CPU than PS2 and twice as much RAM memory.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Made the Shadow The Hedgehog logo as an emblem. Also began work on a My Little Pony emblem of the old cartoon (My Little Pony Tales) show logo.
Dead Or Alive 2 (PlayStation 2)
LEGO Batman The Videogame (PlayStation 2)
Saint Seiya The Hades (PlayStation 2)
What a disappointment. I enjoyed the anime series back in the day, Hilda De Polaris being my favorite character, but this game is just awful.
Ugly, poor controls, repetitive, limited gameplay and game modes, awful game design with enemies being allowed to revive themselves multiple times before you defeat them but you game over instantly if you lose once, enemies are either super easy and can be defeated by repeating a single attack or they are impossibly hard and spam super moves that can't be dodged that drain 95% of your health in one hit, japanese voices only, retarded dialog options you have to unlock before they are actual options but you still have to pick the only option available as if you had a choice only to waste your time and slow down the already awful excuses for cutscenes.
I really didn't find a single redeemable feature in this game. I didn't even get to see Hilda.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Feels good to play my favorite racing game of all time again.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (PlayStation 2)
Awful gameplay design, atrocious tutorial design, garbage programming and optimization with tons of unnecessary in-level loading times and framerate issues, glitches, artificial limitations on what you can do making a vast majority of the moves you have at your disposal unusable, bad voice acting, extremely poor script with cringe worthy dialogue from everyone, continuity problems severely limiting your freedom of options in the levels.
It's a bad game, plain and simple. Play a good stealth action game instead, there are many of them, even in the same series there are better ones that are older, this one is simply one of the worst, avoid it entirely, you're not missing out on anything good if you never play this, you're just saving yourself from a headache and frustration.
The Italian Job L.A. Heist (PlayStation 2)
One of those potentially fantastic games that was ruined by absolutely retarded progress design. Unless you super master every single little corner of the game with every car and save your progress you'll never see a vast majority of it, not even in multiplayer mode which could've been great and fun had they just had everything unlocked to enjoy. Having to perfect the entire singleplayer experience to have anything fun in multiplayer is at best insult to injury. Such a shame. it plays great otherwise, looks great too. Tight controls and fun stunt moves, it has so many top quality attributes it's nothing short of impressive how they managed to systematically go through all the trouble of locking down the entire game and making it one of the hardest games ever to unlock even a single new thing in. One of the best examples of all time on how not to design a game's difficulty and means of progression.
Cold Winter (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre FPS with a great physics engine, tons of interactivity and great dynamic lighting and shadows, too bad none of that is used and it plays more similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Doom than, say, a stealth game or something.
Battle Engine Aquila (PlayStation 2)
Good old cockpit view mech shooter. I wish it would've had a third person view but it's still a good game, some repetitive missions and sadly as always with game like this the developers just had to force in annoying protect and escort missions to ruin the fun.
Star Wars Racer Revenge (PlayStation 2)
I like it, it's fast, looks good, controls good, sounds good and has nice levels with multiple paths. I wish it would've had weapons like WipEout, but you can at least damage your opponents with aggressive playing, so it's not completely limited to just basic racing at least.
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (PlayStation 2)
An okay free-flight spaceship shooter, nowhere near the level of games like StarLancer, Star Trek Invasion, Colony Wars Red Sun or Blast Radius but not bad either, just okay. Framerate issues, some clunky command controls, clunky enemy selection/targeting controls, repetitive defend, destroy all, protect and escort missions and repetitive gameplay keep it from being great.
The SeeD Warzone (PlayStation 2)
I'm getting a little better at this game. I always wanted to be good at it and play through it properly but I've never had the time to dedicate to learning all the depth this game has to offer.
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap (Game Gear)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Mega Drive)
Auto Racing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
It's still not as good as the real thing but it's still good enough to have some fun with.
Bomb Squad (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one is borderline unplayable, the heavy use of the numeric keypad and bad control emulation ruins a lot of the intuitive nature of the game and like most games on this disc the lack of proper instructions makes it so you have to look up extra stuff online to get a good idea what to even do.
Thankfully I already know how to play most these games properly but for others who want to get into Intellivision are gonna have a very hard time with this collection, sadly. It does not show off the awesomeness of the real games running on original hardware, that's for sure.
Skiing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Enduro (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
This one I am not so familiar with, but I'm trying to get the hang of it, I'm getting better.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sadly they've just lazily taken the 60hz NTSC roms and slowed them down to play at 50hz for this collection, so the games run and sound slow and weird, far from the real 50hz PAL original versions on original hardware.
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)
WRC Rally Evolved (PlayStation 2)
A really great rally game with some cool extreme weather effects and stuff, kinda similar to games like Motorstorm Apocalypse or Split/Second.
WRC 4 (PlayStation 2)
A great rally game, it's basically like WRC Rally Evolved but focused on regular rally racing only. Both are great games.
Rally Championship (PlayStation 2)
A fantastic arcade rally game, I love the driving physics, the music is awesome, this may be a new contender for the best [arcade] rally game I've ever played. I can't seem to wipe off the huge dumb grin I get on my face when playing this.
Jet Ion GP (PlayStation 2)
A nostalgic classic for me, I think it was the third or possibly fourth game I got for my PS2 back in the day.
New York Race (PlayStation 2)
I got this game less than a year ago but originally I could've gotten it instead of Jet Ion GP.
Now finally I've been able to compare both side by side and truly see if I made the right choice when I picked Jet Ion GP over New York Race all those years ago.
I have to say yes, I made the right choice, as good as New York Race is, I like Jet Ion GP better. I'm glad to finally have both though.
Sonic CD (Sonic Gems Collection, PlayStation 2)
Beat is with the bad ending but I did probably my personal best run ever, with only having lost one life during the whole playthrough, obtaining 5 of the time stones and getting the good future in I think 8 or 9 stages.
Sonic Unleashed (PlayStation 2)
This game is awful.
It's the same version that is on Wii so I can't even imagine how bad that one must be if it's this game with broken motion controls..
I have the Xbox 360 version, which is different from the PS2/Wii versions, but I haven't played that one yet. I'm guessing it's probably really awful as well, maybe not quite as bad as this one but still really bad, I have no reason to think they made it better in any way that counts, the atrocious Sonic Generations I have on Xbox 360 has made sure I can exclusively assume the very worst of all modern Sonic games.
As a side note, anyone who dares complain about even a single tiny little thing about Sonic 06 needs to play this (and/or Sonic Generations) to see what truly bad Sonic games are like, then they need to beg on their bare knees to Sonic 06 for forgiveness.
Crash of the Titans (PlayStation 2)
I didn't have much hope for this being good but it suprised me, in fact it's one of the better 3D platformers I've played.
Good visuals, good gameplay, good controls, good level design, very good multilingual voice acting.
The combat could've been a bit better in the responsiveness and control, but the ability to take over large enemies and use their abilities adds a nice variety and depth to the combat and gameplay of the entire game, so overall that's all still good too.
Offroad Extreme! (PlayStation 2)
I have this on Wii and played it a few years ago, it was pretty bad with the visuals and framerate but I remember it having really responsive and accurate motion controls, far better than any other Wii game in fact, and now I've tried out the PS2 version and can safely say the framerate, visuals and controls are all much better than in the Wii version, as good as the Wii version's controls are they are to no suprise infinitely better with an analog stick, and the visuals actually look okay in this, still low budget looking but they run silky smooth and the environments and textures don't look weird like they did on Wii.
Simply put, the PS2 version is clearly superior in every way to the newer Wii version, and keep in mind that Wii had a more than twice as powerful CPU than PS2 and twice as much RAM memory.
Armored Core (PlayStation)
Made the Shadow The Hedgehog logo as an emblem. Also began work on a My Little Pony emblem of the old cartoon (My Little Pony Tales) show logo.
Dead Or Alive 2 (PlayStation 2)
LEGO Batman The Videogame (PlayStation 2)
Saint Seiya The Hades (PlayStation 2)
What a disappointment. I enjoyed the anime series back in the day, Hilda De Polaris being my favorite character, but this game is just awful.
Ugly, poor controls, repetitive, limited gameplay and game modes, awful game design with enemies being allowed to revive themselves multiple times before you defeat them but you game over instantly if you lose once, enemies are either super easy and can be defeated by repeating a single attack or they are impossibly hard and spam super moves that can't be dodged that drain 95% of your health in one hit, japanese voices only, retarded dialog options you have to unlock before they are actual options but you still have to pick the only option available as if you had a choice only to waste your time and slow down the already awful excuses for cutscenes.
I really didn't find a single redeemable feature in this game. I didn't even get to see Hilda.
DT Racer (PlayStation 2)
Feels good to play my favorite racing game of all time again.
Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (PlayStation 2)
Awful gameplay design, atrocious tutorial design, garbage programming and optimization with tons of unnecessary in-level loading times and framerate issues, glitches, artificial limitations on what you can do making a vast majority of the moves you have at your disposal unusable, bad voice acting, extremely poor script with cringe worthy dialogue from everyone, continuity problems severely limiting your freedom of options in the levels.
It's a bad game, plain and simple. Play a good stealth action game instead, there are many of them, even in the same series there are better ones that are older, this one is simply one of the worst, avoid it entirely, you're not missing out on anything good if you never play this, you're just saving yourself from a headache and frustration.
The Italian Job L.A. Heist (PlayStation 2)
One of those potentially fantastic games that was ruined by absolutely retarded progress design. Unless you super master every single little corner of the game with every car and save your progress you'll never see a vast majority of it, not even in multiplayer mode which could've been great and fun had they just had everything unlocked to enjoy. Having to perfect the entire singleplayer experience to have anything fun in multiplayer is at best insult to injury. Such a shame. it plays great otherwise, looks great too. Tight controls and fun stunt moves, it has so many top quality attributes it's nothing short of impressive how they managed to systematically go through all the trouble of locking down the entire game and making it one of the hardest games ever to unlock even a single new thing in. One of the best examples of all time on how not to design a game's difficulty and means of progression.
Cold Winter (PlayStation 2)
An overall mediocre FPS with a great physics engine, tons of interactivity and great dynamic lighting and shadows, too bad none of that is used and it plays more similar to Wolfenstein 3D or Doom than, say, a stealth game or something.
Battle Engine Aquila (PlayStation 2)
Good old cockpit view mech shooter. I wish it would've had a third person view but it's still a good game, some repetitive missions and sadly as always with game like this the developers just had to force in annoying protect and escort missions to ruin the fun.
Star Wars Racer Revenge (PlayStation 2)
I like it, it's fast, looks good, controls good, sounds good and has nice levels with multiple paths. I wish it would've had weapons like WipEout, but you can at least damage your opponents with aggressive playing, so it's not completely limited to just basic racing at least.
Star Wars Jedi Starfighter (PlayStation 2)
An okay free-flight spaceship shooter, nowhere near the level of games like StarLancer, Star Trek Invasion, Colony Wars Red Sun or Blast Radius but not bad either, just okay. Framerate issues, some clunky command controls, clunky enemy selection/targeting controls, repetitive defend, destroy all, protect and escort missions and repetitive gameplay keep it from being great.
The SeeD Warzone (PlayStation 2)
I'm getting a little better at this game. I always wanted to be good at it and play through it properly but I've never had the time to dedicate to learning all the depth this game has to offer.
Super Mario Bros. 3 (Entertainment System)
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Sonic The Hedgehog (Mega Drive)
Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Mega Drive)
Wonder Boy The Dragon's Trap (Game Gear)
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Gaming Purchases - Januari 2018
Januari 9th:
A shopping trip resulted in some nice finds today.
3DS:
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (new, sealed)
Yoshi's New Island (new, sealed)
Wii:
Star Wars The Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels
PlayStation Vita:
two Vita 2000 Slim model protection cases (new, sealed)
Xbox 360:
Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Hot Wheels:
Aston Martin 1963 DB5
Batman Live! Batmobile
Dragon Blaster
Flash Drive
Ford Shelby GR-1 Concept (orange with black stripe)
Howlin' Heat
Knight Draggin'
Lamborghini Countach (Tooned series)
Mad Manga
Ratmobile
Speedy Pérez
Steer Clear
Turbot
Transformers:
Dickie Toys - Transformers Robots in Disguise - Metal Series 1 - Sideswipe
Hot Wheels Star Wars:
Boba Fett's Slave I
Millennium Falcon
Rebel Snowspeeder
Tie Fighter
X-Wing Fighter - Red 5
Y-Wing Fighter - Gold Leader
tools and stuff:
several different sizes of extendable/retractable utility knives
a set of pocket sized precision screwdrivers
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Januari 16th:
some second-hand finds
PC:
American McGee's Alice (SoldOut!)
Lego:
Lego 3855 Star Wars Battle of Hoth (board game set)
Toys:
Wonder Woman figure (McDonalds 2016)
Super Mario Kart Mario figure
CD:
Basshunter - Now You're Gone (singel)
Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It (singel)
DVD:
Barbie presenterar Tummelisa (Barbie presents THumbelina (2009))
Black Beauty (1971)
Disney's Talespin Vol. 1
Haja Läget 2 (The Reef 2)
Kungen och Jag (Anna and the King (1999))
Milo mot Mars (Mars needs moms)
Moses Nilens Prins (Prince of the Nile The Story of Moses (1998))
Sagan om My Little Pony (My Little Pony The Movie (1986))
Anime DVD:
Porco Rosso
Rurouni Kenshin Samurai X Vol. 1 Trust
Rurouni Kenshin Samurai X Vol. 2 Betrayal
Bluray:
Haj Fajv (Seefood)
Books:
Disney's Klassiker Törnrosa
Disney's Tjuren Ferdinand
Det Var En Gång Askungen
and some outlet movies from a movie rental store
DVD:
Monster High Electrified
Spark
Bluray:
Monster High Boo York, Boo York A Monsterrific Musical
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Januari 17th:
picked up some more outlet movies at the movie rental store today as they stocked up with some new ones
DVD:
Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice
Colossal
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Hostel 3
Husdjurens Hemliga Liv (The Secret Life of Pets)
Kong Skull Island
Monster High Scaris Skräckens Stad (Monster High Scaris City of Frights)
Bluray:
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
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Januari 19th:
Ordered a bunch of games online, it's friday today so they should arrive some time next week if everything goes as planned.
from one place I ordered (these arrived the following monday, the 22nd)
Mega Drive:
Battle Frenzy (German, no manual)
Saturn:
Virtual On Cyber Troopers Operation Moongate (Japanese)
3DS:
Skylanders Giants Booster Pack (new)
GameCube:
V-Rally 3
PlayStation:
Aironauts
Cybersled
Firebugs (no manual)
Roswell Conspiracies
PlayStation 2:
Garfield Saving Arlene
Dreamcast:
Tomee High Definition VGA Cable with separate composite RCA plugs for stereo audio (new)
Amiibo:
Splatoon 2-pack - Callie & Marie (new)
and from another place I ordered (these arrived on the following thursday, the 25th)
DS:
Disney's Kim Possible Global Gemini
Lego Batman The Videogame
Lego Star Wars II Original Trilogy (no manual)
3DS:
Lego Star Wars III The Clone Wars
PlayStation:
Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (Platinum)
Syphon Filter 2 (Platinum)
PlayStation 2:
WinX Club
Lego Batman The Videogame
Offroad Extreme!
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast
Rally Championship
Saint Seiya The Hades
Sonic Mega Collection Plus
Sonic Unleashed
WRC 4 (Platinum)
WRC Rally Evolved
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Januari 23rd:
No games today, just some other second-hand finds.
CD:
Darude - Sandstorm (single)
N.G.3 As Nasty As We Wanna Be
VCD:
Mickey Mouse (Chinese)
Tom & Jerry (Chinese)
DVD:
Disney's Princess Stories Vol. 2 Tales of Friendship
Hocus Pocus
Monster High 13 Wishes
Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 1
The Fairytaler Vol. 12 H.C. Andersen's The Snow Queen
Bluray:
The Hobbit Smaugs Ödemark (The Desolation of Smaug)
Comics:
Bugs Bunny #1 1995
Carousel #1 2009
Carousel #3 2009
Asterix and the Vikings
Asterix Rose and Pedal
Berts Dagbok
Berts Dagbok
Lilla Fridolf
91an Karlsson
91an Karlsson
Min Häst
Tom & Jerry
Bamse
Books:
Bolt
Peter Pan
Lego:
a Lego bucket with assorted Lego Friends content
Other:
a miniature crystal stone guardian lion figurine
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Januari 25th:
went and picked up the second order of games today (listed above) and also bought some other stuff at a second-hand store
PlayStation 2:
EyeToy Play Astro Zoo (Platinum)
DVD:
Disney's Frozen
Lego Star Wars The Yoda Chronicles Vol. 1
Mamma Mu & Kråkan The Movie
Books:
Barbie on Ski Vacation
Disney's Robin Hood the big ambush
Disney's Aristocats on the run
Other:
glass marbles and stones
and a movie rental store
DVD:
Baby Boss (2017)
Monster Trucks (2017) they had one copy left of the Bluray version of Monster Trucks but my friend saw it first, so I could only get the DVD, maybe I'll find another copy of the Bluray version some day
A shopping trip resulted in some nice finds today.
3DS:
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (new, sealed)
Yoshi's New Island (new, sealed)
Wii:
Star Wars The Clone Wars Lightsaber Duels
PlayStation Vita:
two Vita 2000 Slim model protection cases (new, sealed)
Xbox 360:
Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Hot Wheels:
Aston Martin 1963 DB5
Batman Live! Batmobile
Dragon Blaster
Flash Drive
Ford Shelby GR-1 Concept (orange with black stripe)
Howlin' Heat
Knight Draggin'
Lamborghini Countach (Tooned series)
Mad Manga
Ratmobile
Speedy Pérez
Steer Clear
Turbot
Transformers:
Dickie Toys - Transformers Robots in Disguise - Metal Series 1 - Sideswipe
Hot Wheels Star Wars:
Boba Fett's Slave I
Millennium Falcon
Rebel Snowspeeder
Tie Fighter
X-Wing Fighter - Red 5
Y-Wing Fighter - Gold Leader
tools and stuff:
several different sizes of extendable/retractable utility knives
a set of pocket sized precision screwdrivers
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Januari 16th:
some second-hand finds
PC:
American McGee's Alice (SoldOut!)
Lego:
Lego 3855 Star Wars Battle of Hoth (board game set)
Toys:
Wonder Woman figure (McDonalds 2016)
Super Mario Kart Mario figure
CD:
Basshunter - Now You're Gone (singel)
Reel 2 Real - I Like To Move It (singel)
DVD:
Barbie presenterar Tummelisa (Barbie presents THumbelina (2009))
Black Beauty (1971)
Disney's Talespin Vol. 1
Haja Läget 2 (The Reef 2)
Kungen och Jag (Anna and the King (1999))
Milo mot Mars (Mars needs moms)
Moses Nilens Prins (Prince of the Nile The Story of Moses (1998))
Sagan om My Little Pony (My Little Pony The Movie (1986))
Anime DVD:
Porco Rosso
Rurouni Kenshin Samurai X Vol. 1 Trust
Rurouni Kenshin Samurai X Vol. 2 Betrayal
Bluray:
Haj Fajv (Seefood)
Books:
Disney's Klassiker Törnrosa
Disney's Tjuren Ferdinand
Det Var En Gång Askungen
and some outlet movies from a movie rental store
DVD:
Monster High Electrified
Spark
Bluray:
Monster High Boo York, Boo York A Monsterrific Musical
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Januari 17th:
picked up some more outlet movies at the movie rental store today as they stocked up with some new ones
DVD:
Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice
Colossal
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Hostel 3
Husdjurens Hemliga Liv (The Secret Life of Pets)
Kong Skull Island
Monster High Scaris Skräckens Stad (Monster High Scaris City of Frights)
Bluray:
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Januari 19th:
Ordered a bunch of games online, it's friday today so they should arrive some time next week if everything goes as planned.
from one place I ordered (these arrived the following monday, the 22nd)
Mega Drive:
Battle Frenzy (German, no manual)
Saturn:
Virtual On Cyber Troopers Operation Moongate (Japanese)
3DS:
Skylanders Giants Booster Pack (new)
GameCube:
V-Rally 3
PlayStation:
Aironauts
Cybersled
Firebugs (no manual)
Roswell Conspiracies
PlayStation 2:
Garfield Saving Arlene
Dreamcast:
Tomee High Definition VGA Cable with separate composite RCA plugs for stereo audio (new)
Amiibo:
Splatoon 2-pack - Callie & Marie (new)
and from another place I ordered (these arrived on the following thursday, the 25th)
DS:
Disney's Kim Possible Global Gemini
Lego Batman The Videogame
Lego Star Wars II Original Trilogy (no manual)
3DS:
Lego Star Wars III The Clone Wars
PlayStation:
Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (Platinum)
Syphon Filter 2 (Platinum)
PlayStation 2:
WinX Club
Lego Batman The Videogame
Offroad Extreme!
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast
Rally Championship
Saint Seiya The Hades
Sonic Mega Collection Plus
Sonic Unleashed
WRC 4 (Platinum)
WRC Rally Evolved
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Januari 23rd:
No games today, just some other second-hand finds.
CD:
Darude - Sandstorm (single)
N.G.3 As Nasty As We Wanna Be
VCD:
Mickey Mouse (Chinese)
Tom & Jerry (Chinese)
DVD:
Disney's Princess Stories Vol. 2 Tales of Friendship
Hocus Pocus
Monster High 13 Wishes
Pixar Short Films Collection Vol. 1
The Fairytaler Vol. 12 H.C. Andersen's The Snow Queen
Bluray:
The Hobbit Smaugs Ödemark (The Desolation of Smaug)
Comics:
Bugs Bunny #1 1995
Carousel #1 2009
Carousel #3 2009
Asterix and the Vikings
Asterix Rose and Pedal
Berts Dagbok
Berts Dagbok
Lilla Fridolf
91an Karlsson
91an Karlsson
Min Häst
Tom & Jerry
Bamse
Books:
Bolt
Peter Pan
Lego:
a Lego bucket with assorted Lego Friends content
Other:
a miniature crystal stone guardian lion figurine
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Januari 25th:
went and picked up the second order of games today (listed above) and also bought some other stuff at a second-hand store
PlayStation 2:
EyeToy Play Astro Zoo (Platinum)
DVD:
Disney's Frozen
Lego Star Wars The Yoda Chronicles Vol. 1
Mamma Mu & Kråkan The Movie
Books:
Barbie on Ski Vacation
Disney's Robin Hood the big ambush
Disney's Aristocats on the run
Other:
glass marbles and stones
and a movie rental store
DVD:
Baby Boss (2017)
Monster Trucks (2017) they had one copy left of the Bluray version of Monster Trucks but my friend saw it first, so I could only get the DVD, maybe I'll find another copy of the Bluray version some day
Now Playing - Januari 2018
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (3DS)
beat it 100%
Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
beat story mode
Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
beat it 100%
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes (Xbox 360)
beat it 100%
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (3DS)
Now I see why the Vita version was so mediocre and lackluster, it's sadly just a port of the 3DS version rather than a properly made and optimized Vita original version or stationary console port like it could've easily been seeing as the Vita is literally PS3 hardware and there are games on it that surpass even the best technical achievements on the PS3, like the incredibly impressive Killzone Mercenary that far surpasses games like Killzone 2 and 3 and Resistance 2 and 3, four of the very finest shooters the PS3 has to offer! not saying this is a bad game, it's just a shame the low tech 3DS (it's weaker than the old PSP) got a custom version when the vastly more powerful Vita just gets a slightly polished up port.
Yoshi's New Island (3DS)
Unresponsive, stiff, forced motion controls during certain segments, one-way levels that force you to replay the level from the beginning if you missed something, plain and simple this game feels like it was designed in the mid 80s.
Battle Frenzy/Bloodshot (Mega Drive)
An FPS in a similar vein to Wolfenstein 3D only in a sci-fi setting and it has a 2 player split-screen multiplayer mode.
It's a good game for the time and I like it, it gets a bit choppy and the countdown at the end of every level is almost a greater enemy than the nasty killer machines you face along the way.
It's a very tough game but it's cool enough and still enjoyable.
I got the european version titled Battle Frenzy but in the game the title screen still says Bloodshot.
Disney's Kim Possible Global Gemini (DS, played on 3DS)
Very similar to the PS2 game Kim Possible What's the Switch?, it actually does a really good job with the visuals and gameplay alike, its' smooth, responsive, you got good moves and I like the visual style with some flat shaded polygonal stuff, it fits with the cartoony look perfectly and helps the DS keep up a nice level of detail and a brisk framerate at the same time, a very well crafted game overall so far and I'm enjoying it.
UPDATE: The on-rail segments with snowboard and moped suck, they use the touch screen as a pseudo analog steering tablet and it's awkward as fuck to hold the DS/3DS while playing a game that way, those are by far the worst parts of the game so far, also the matrix type levels aren't very good either, it's just a gauntlet of dodging laser beams and a lot of grapple hook swinging, neither of which are this game's strong points, also they look really generic with the same blue grid pattern on everything.
WinX Club (PlayStation 2)
Finally I got hold of this for PS2, I've had the PC version for a few years but as both a fan of WinX Club and an avid console gamer I've always wanted the PS2 version specifically. It's virtually identical to the PC version. A good action platformer and great game for WinX Club fans.
beat it 100%
Lego Marvel Avengers (PlayStation Vita)
beat story mode
Lego Batman The Videogame (Xbox 360)
beat it 100%
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (PlayStation Vita)
Lego Batman 2 DC Super Heroes (Xbox 360)
beat it 100%
Lego Star Wars The Force Awakens (3DS)
Now I see why the Vita version was so mediocre and lackluster, it's sadly just a port of the 3DS version rather than a properly made and optimized Vita original version or stationary console port like it could've easily been seeing as the Vita is literally PS3 hardware and there are games on it that surpass even the best technical achievements on the PS3, like the incredibly impressive Killzone Mercenary that far surpasses games like Killzone 2 and 3 and Resistance 2 and 3, four of the very finest shooters the PS3 has to offer! not saying this is a bad game, it's just a shame the low tech 3DS (it's weaker than the old PSP) got a custom version when the vastly more powerful Vita just gets a slightly polished up port.
Yoshi's New Island (3DS)
Unresponsive, stiff, forced motion controls during certain segments, one-way levels that force you to replay the level from the beginning if you missed something, plain and simple this game feels like it was designed in the mid 80s.
Battle Frenzy/Bloodshot (Mega Drive)
An FPS in a similar vein to Wolfenstein 3D only in a sci-fi setting and it has a 2 player split-screen multiplayer mode.
It's a good game for the time and I like it, it gets a bit choppy and the countdown at the end of every level is almost a greater enemy than the nasty killer machines you face along the way.
It's a very tough game but it's cool enough and still enjoyable.
I got the european version titled Battle Frenzy but in the game the title screen still says Bloodshot.
Disney's Kim Possible Global Gemini (DS, played on 3DS)
Very similar to the PS2 game Kim Possible What's the Switch?, it actually does a really good job with the visuals and gameplay alike, its' smooth, responsive, you got good moves and I like the visual style with some flat shaded polygonal stuff, it fits with the cartoony look perfectly and helps the DS keep up a nice level of detail and a brisk framerate at the same time, a very well crafted game overall so far and I'm enjoying it.
UPDATE: The on-rail segments with snowboard and moped suck, they use the touch screen as a pseudo analog steering tablet and it's awkward as fuck to hold the DS/3DS while playing a game that way, those are by far the worst parts of the game so far, also the matrix type levels aren't very good either, it's just a gauntlet of dodging laser beams and a lot of grapple hook swinging, neither of which are this game's strong points, also they look really generic with the same blue grid pattern on everything.
WinX Club (PlayStation 2)
Finally I got hold of this for PS2, I've had the PC version for a few years but as both a fan of WinX Club and an avid console gamer I've always wanted the PS2 version specifically. It's virtually identical to the PC version. A good action platformer and great game for WinX Club fans.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Gaming Purchases - December 2017
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!
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!
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.
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.
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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