Showing posts with label kart racing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kart racing. Show all posts

Monday, October 1, 2018

Now Playing - Oktober 2018

Tearaway (PlayStation Vita)
Getting further one amazing place at a time. I love this game.

Yoshi's New Island (3DS)
This game still sucks but I wanted to play something on 3DS that I haven't already played that much.
I discovered a new thing about it though, when you die a few times in a row (like I did in a part that was really cheap designed and you just had to make blind faith jumps and there were insta kill spikes you had to know beforehand to stick the landing) it gives you a cheat automatically so you can fly indefinitely in the level you're in, too bad they didn't just design the game better so there weren't tons of cheap deaths, they already give you a fuckton of extra lives, I have over 80 lives and I've died plenty of times due to cheap level design, but they respawn so you can literally die three time and gain 9 lives because there's usually around 3 lives every single section of every level, so die in one section once and you're more likely to gain 2 or 3 lives from that death than actually lose 1, it's ridiculous, and adding that infinite flight cheat powerup they give you when you've died like 3 times in a row, I just may have found the easiest game in the world, I don't see how anyone can not complete this game, which isn't a bad thing in itself, it's great that they have the game balanced so everyone can play it, skilled players and complete beginners, but it would've been infinitely better had they designed a good game first rather than a shitfest or garbage level design with poor and very limited controls and an unfinished art design.
Seriously, the original Yoshi's Island on Super Nintendo and the enhanced GBA version are both ten trillion times better than this crap.

Azure Dreams (PlayStation)
A generic action adventure game with some mixed visuals, the 2D sprites are nice but the 3D environments are quite bland, and there are so many forced tutorials I feel like I've played through an entire game already but I'm still just at the very beginning, what a horrible way to start a game, I sure hope it picks up soon or I won't bother, I got many better games to spend my time with, like Illusion of gaia on Super Nintendo that I began playing last month.

Dreams to Reality (PlayStation)
An odd and obscure 3D platformer with flying mechanics. It doesn't have the best controls or visuals ever, but I kinda like it so far. I don't know how inspired the developers were by the Saturn game Nights into Dreams but they sure have a lot in common.

Pax Corpus (PlayStation)
Really awkward controls in this one but kinda interesting, I like it but I only have a russian version, making it harder to play for sure when you don't know what the fuck is going on.

Psycho Fox (Master System)
Not loving the momentum of the controls, you have to work up speed to make jumps, this is rather cumbersome in a platformer, a good game otherwise. Looks good, sounds good.

Thrill Kill Full Uncensored NTSC-U (PlayStation)
Still my favorite fighting game of all time and still the #1 reason why EA remains at the top of my permanent boycott blacklist.

Monster Racer (PlayStation)
Given the time of year I decided to give this Halloween inspired kart-esque racer another try. I haven't played it more than once when I had just bought it and I didn't think much of it.
I can say now after having played through the main mode that it's really not much more than I initially thought, actually it's nothing more at all, it's exactly what I thought when I played it the first time.
It's still a generic kart racer style game and it's nothing special in any way, the visuals are solid enough and the controls work, the music is completely forgettable and uninspired, the sound effects and as stock as can be and mostly unfitting and lame for what they are suppose to be representing, the levels and playable characters are unoriginal and bland and the powerups are unbalanced, some last way too long while others are completely useless, the only powerup that really matters in the turbo boost as it can make you lap the other opponents, it's literally that overpowered. That's easy mode at least, normal on the other hand is so hard you'll try using every trick available just to not end up in last place, I still haven't gotten better than second last on normal, it's a huge leap in difficulty from easy to normal, to say the least.

Anyway, I decided to record a playthrough of the adventure mode, it's available as a playlist on YouTube by clicking here.

Also here are the individual videos:
Botanic Garden

Port

Mad Jungle

Egypte

Castle

Museum

Mine

Iceberg

Teath Pass

Volcano

Botanic Garden (reverse)

Port (reverse)

Mad Jungle (reverse)

Egypte (reverse)

Castle (reverse)

Museum (reverse)

Mine (reverse)

Iceberg (reverse)

Teath Pass (reverse)

Volcano (reverse)

WILD WILD RACING (PlayStation 2)
The most classic PS2 offroad racer of them all, I love this game and I really needed to play a good racing game after having played so much Monster Racer lately.

I recorded a replay of a random Time Trial race.

LEGO Star Wars III The Clone Wars (3DS)
Just picking up where I left off earlier this year, I haven't gotten very far in this one yet.

Gale Gunner (PlayStation)
Basically Virtual On on PlayStation. I like it. It's a lot better than the N64 equivalent, whatever that was called, I forgot.

S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)
Just playing some of my favorite kart racer ever, after having suffered through the deeply flawed mediocrity that is Monster Racer I need to play some good racing games to make up for all the suckiness I've endured, plain and simple.

Bakugan Defenders of the Core (PlayStation Portable)
This game turned 8 years old on the 26th (NTSC-U release) and 29th (PAL release) so I'm celebrating with some awesome monster fighting goodness.

I recorded a battle from the PSP version between Neo Dragonoid and Ingram to celebrate.
(Swedish language)

Auto Racing (Intellivision Lives!, PlayStation 2)
Playing the emulated version on PS2 using the Intellivision Lives! disc. It's daly not very good, running very slowly even on the fastest speed settings and with really bad audio emulation and audio glitches causing the tire brake noises to get stuck in annoying loops that rape the ears pretty badly around almost every turn.

I managed to record my favorite car on my favorite track though.

Auto Racing (Intellivision)
The difference between the real thing and the PS2 version is almost like playing two entirely different games.

Sonic 3D Flickies' Island (Sonic Mega Collection Plus, PlayStation 2)

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Now Playing - Oktober 2017

September is over so I will dial down the 32 extravaganza a bit and focus on horror themed games and monster games instead, still with an underlying 32-bit focus though.

Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)

Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)

S.C.A.R.S. (PlayStation)

WipEout 2097 (PlayStation)

V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)

Jersey Devil (PlayStation)

Fossil Fighters Frontier (3DS)

WRC FIA World Rally Championship (PlayStation Portable)

Alien Trilogy (PlayStation)

Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap i Kvadrat (PlayStation)
Also known as Asterix Mega Madness Galenskap Till Max, is a multiplayer-focused minigame collection for PC and PlayStation developed by UDS and published by Infogrames in 2001.
It's a 3D game with low minimum system requirements and it runs effortlessly without any compatibility problems on my much more modern hardware and software.
The visuals look good enough, not overly impressive by 2001 standards but they get the job done without any issues so I'm not complaining, it plays well with simple and easy to learn and use controls and the gameplay is for the most part fun and varied.
You play as either Asterix, Obelix, Mrs. Geriatrix or Cacofonix.
As I mentioned it's a multiplayer-focused game, so it supports the use of keyboard and a USB controller to allow for 2-player split-screen gameplay, which is very nice to see in a computer game for once!

Asterix Mega Madness (PlayStation)
I decided to check out the PlayStation port to see if there were any differences, and no, it was virtually identical to the PC game, beyond the obvious PlayStation things like loading from the disc causing slightly longer load times (which may be shortened if you play it on a PS2 with the faster disc loading enabled), a lower screen resolution adapted for display on older TVs (which can be changed if playing via an emulator on PC) and the lack of texture filtering (which is available if you play it on a PS2 or via emulation on PC) there are no real differences, some sprites are smaller to fit the lower screen resolution of older TVs better, but other than that the 3D geometry detail, framerate, colors, texture quality, controls, music, animated cutscenes and all other content is completely intact and seemingly identical.
It's an as flawless port as it possibly can be and lives up to the high Asterix & Obelix quality the series is known for.

Kao The Kangaroo Round 2 (PC)
An unusually good 3D platformer, at least by PC standards, seeing as they're usually best found on consoles, this was a multiplatform game though so it's also on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox but it works very well on PC, even a shitty PC like mine it managed to run fairly smooth.
It seems to use the Massive engine, that powers the excellent AquaNox games, which would explain why it looks as good as it does while still running so well, it's a very good graphics engine.

Sonic R (PC)
Found this game while I was doing some cleaning, I'd put it away in a box with some other older stuff like Adobe Photoshop 5.0, Quake II, Unreal, some racing game and a couple of other games I've never even played because they wouldn't work on the PC I had back then.. maybe I'll give those a try with my current PC at some point as well.
Anyway, I decided to install this and see if I could get it running, and after having found working fixes for the issues I was having (an additional program was needed to make the controls work and a hex edited file was needed for better resolution settings), it works well enough with no major problems, I've seen some minor visual glitches and the resolution is not the same as Windows so it screws up the order of my desktop icons every time I play, but it's no biggie and it plays just fine otherwise.
The funny thing is, I have a russian version of the game, so it's Sonic R.. in russian.
It still plays like normal but all text and the voice clips have been changed to russian, and I don't understand a single word, I can guess what words mean "retry", "save", "load" or "quit" and other such basic stuff, but the rest is just strange symbols mixed with a random handful of recognizable letters.
Still, it's a fun game, I like it, it's one of the few mascot kart racer type games from the 90s I actually enjoy playing because it adds the extra depth to the gameplay with side missions during races, like finding hidden chaos emeralds and stuff.