Juni 2nd:
Visited my mom again today. She had another good day and we walked a full lap around the entire hospital, great weather yesterday too, and on the way home I visited GameStop again.
The Wii U console and all games were pre-owned/used (unless otherwise specified), and the collectibles were all new.
DS:
WinX Club Rockstars
Wii:
Kororinpa
Monster High Ghoul Spirit
Wii U hardware:
a black Wii U Elite 32GB console (with tablet controller, Wii sensor bar, power cable, HDMI cable, charger cable for the tablet, charging bay for the tablet, a regular stand for the tablet and two small clip-on vertical stands for the console)
PlayStation 3:
Call of Duty Black Ops II (disc only)
Crysis 2 (disc only)
Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate (disc only)
Saints Row IV (made sure to pick up the correct game this time!)
PlayStation 4:
RIGS Mechanized Combat League (new)
Xbox 360:
Colin McRae DiRT (disc only)
Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 (disc only)
Skyrim (disc only)
Race Driver GRID (disc only)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (disc only)
WarTech Senko no Ronde (this was the PAL version, I originally got the NTSC version back in the day and it's nice to finally have the proper PAL release as well)
Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z Special Edition (sadly missing the Special Edition comic book, but the soundtrack CD was included)
Collectibles/Other:
a StarLink Pilot Pack - Razor Lemay
two more Crash Bandicoot keyring figure blindbags (containing Aku Aku and yet another Crash)
and two more Lara Croft Temple of Osiris Totaku figures
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juni 11th:
Went ahead and ordered some games, mainly for my recently purchased Wii U since I didn't have anything to play on it other than regular Wii games.
I placed orders from two separate places a few of days ago (Juni 8th) and the first package arrived today. The games that arrived today were all new and sealed copies.
PlayStation 3:
Ultimate Action Triple Pack (Just Cause 2, Sleeping Dogs and the Tomb Raider 2013 Reboot)
Wii U:
Art Academy Atellier
Call of Duty Black Ops II
Legend of Kay Anniversary
LEGO Batman 3 Beyond Gotham
LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Juni 12th:
Second order of games arrived today. All of these were used copies.
UPDATE: Two of the four games didn't work! Zelda Wind Waker HD was damaged on the data side of the disc so it didn't work at all, the Wii U didn't even recognize it as a Wii U game, and ZombiU was the american release, which doesn't work on my european Wii U system. It should've been labelled as an import but they hadn't noticed and sold it as a regular game by mistake.
LEGO Batman 2 and Super Mario 3D World both worked, but there was extensive water damage to the Super Mario 3D World cover so the paper was all gross and nasty, and the LEGO Batman 2 disc has some rather worrying looking scratches on it.
The scratches on LEGO Batman 2 were on the outer part of the disc and the game starts up without any issues. Hopefully they're shallow enough that it will remain fully playable without any noticeable issues, but until I've played through the entire game 100%, I can't say for certain.
I contacted the store about this and because these were all Wii U games, they didn't have any more copies to replace them with.
I am to return the two games that didn't work and then I would get a 10% discount on the order for the remaining two games as "goodwill", as they phrased it in their reply.
Wii U:
LEGO Batman 2 DC Super Heroes (some scratches on the disc, only playing through it and 100%-ing the game will tell if it will have problems later on or not)
Super Mario 3D World (game was fine but the cover had severe water damage and looked gross, grimy and nasty as a result)
The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker HD (didn't work at all, there was damage on the data side of the disc and the Wii U didn't even recognize the disc)
ZombiU (american release, unplayable on my european Wii U)
Sonic All-Stars Racing Transformed (PlayStation Vita)
V-Rally (PlayStation)
Joyriding.
Super Mario Bros. (Entertainment System)
Just a quick playthrough.
The Valley Rule (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Vector TD 2 (PC)
Just a quick playthrough.
Grand Theft Auto (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Just testing it out a little bit.
Lego Batman 3 Beyond Gotham (Xbox 360)
Still trying to replicate the glitch with the combining hubworlds, sadly to no success. I have completed some regular challenge in the game in the meantime though.
Senario Vs. Maxx (Plug&Play)
Just playing some of the games for fun, Smart Escape is still the best of the bunch.
Been playing some games at a friend's house, Ice Hockey, Double Dribble and Ice Climber on Entertainment System and some various games on his new Atari Flashback, a fishing game, a cowboy duel game (Outlaw), a tank game (Combat) and some other ones (American Football, Football ("Soccer"), and some top-down racing games).
I've also installed an Intellivision emulator (Bliss 2.04) and am trying out some of the games I own, since I don't own an actual Intellivision console to play them on this is as good as I can do at the moment.
BurgerTime! (Intellivision)
BurgerTime! is a really good arcade game and a lot of fun to play, the Intellivision version is great.
Pac-Man (Intellivision)
One of the top best older versions of Pac-Man for sure.
Frog Bog (Intellivision)
It's a lot more fun when you activate manual controls.
Popeye (Intellivision)
A fun arcade game, not the most impressive version but a good game regardless and still very enjoyable, I prefer it to some of the more technically impressive versions as some of the added animations, music and sound effects etc. in other versions aren't always that good and end up being kind of awkward, so at the end of the day this is still my favorite version.
Skiing (Intellivision)
A simple but enjoyable skiing game, I'd say it's one of the best due to it's simplicity, compared to for example Slalom on Entertainment System this is much better as that game is far too hard and has rather annoying controls in which you have to constantly hold up on the steering cross to go forward, which is absolute murder on your thumb, and when compared to more modern games like Alpine Skiing 2007 on PS2 for example it's also superior as that game is a bit too technical and advanced for it's own good, it looks fantastic for a PS2 game but it's just not very fun to play, Skiing on Intellivision is just a great and simple little game to pick up and play and for us who aren't into the sport of skiing that's really all you need, and it makes for a better experience than all the licenced and complicated stuff other skiing games have to offer, at least in my opinion.
Utopia (Intellivision)
Trying to learn how to play this properly, it's a really cool game once you learn it, like a versus sim game, you control one of two islands with each of the two controllers and you try to manage your island as good as you can for a set amount of turns, the one who has managed their island the best at the end, wins.
Centipede (Intellivision)
A good version, nothing spectacular but it does what it needs to do, if you know Centipede in general then you know the Intellivision version as well, it's just the same good old classic Centipede.
Stadium Mud Buggies (Intellivision)
A great isometric racing game with good control, good visuals, lots of content and great driving physics.
Monster Truck Rally (Entertainment System)
The spiritual successor to Stadium Mud Buggies, basically the same game with even more content and better visuals.
Been playing some more games at a friend's house, now on his Mega Drive Flashback; Golden Axe 1, 2 and 3, Eternal Champions, Bonanza Bros., Flicky and Mortal Kombat 1 and 2.
Auto Racing (Intellivision)
An underrated top-down racer with some really good driving physics making it a blast to powerslide through corners like a pro. Got some nice visuals too with the cars and roadside buildings having shadows and the game shows off some nice multi-directional scrolling for such an old title.
This game commonly gets a bad rep for having bad controls but it all boils down to learning the controls, and they aren't even hard to learn, I'm honestly astonished over how many seem to struggle with them, basically the control disc is like a steering wheel, using the 16-directional input as a means to determine how much you're turning in either direction, only it's even easier as you don't actually have to turn it, you can just press down where you want and the game will do it, it's of course easier to explain in real life with an actual controller or with visual aids but here's an attempt at doing so in text form anyway; for example, pressing up on the disc does nothing as that's where the steering wheel is neutral, pressing up and diagonally will only ever so slightly steer in those direction, which can be good for minor adjustments, pressing straight left or right will give you a moderate amount of turning while still not risking any spin-outs, and pressing the lower part of the disc while turning, as in lower diagonal-left and lower diagonal-right, will result in significantly tighter turning, this can cause spin-outs if you do it too much from left to right in quick succession, but if done correctly you'll powerslide through corners at high speeds and it'll feel like a modern racing game only with a top-down camera angle and retro visuals, and finally you can slide it over to the other side and basically do 180 degree handbrake like turns and even pull off proper 360s if you're good enough, it's a genuine analog control that simply wasn't a thing again at all until the later part of the 90s, so enormous amounts of kudos to this game for implementing such a control scheme this early on and of course an equal amount of Kudos to the Intellivision for having such an awesome controller for making it possible in the first place, most impressive, you also have brakes on the action buttons but they're rarely needed even on the harder tracks, only the two fastest cars truly need the use of braking, it automatically accelerates so you just have to focus on steering for the most part.
There is an older and much more rare version of the game that had another control scheme (the regular one was an option too but you had to input a code to access it) and I can kind of excuse anyone who's played that as it seems to have far harder to manage controls than the regular version, but my guess is that a majority of those who have trouble with the game has it due to them using emulation where they try and map the 16-directional control disc to a 4-directional steering cross on a modern controller or the arrow keys on a keyboard, effectively losing 12 steps of analog sensitivity in the process, it's literally the same thing as mapping a modern console's analog stick to WASD, you'll lose any and all analog sensitivity and some games simply won't play correctly if they require you to use that sensitivity, as is the case of Auto Racing, despite being an older game the system was WAY ahead of it's time and the analog disc circle pad was only one of many things it did that took competitors many years, sometimes close to a couple of decades to catch up to.
Bowling (Intellivision)
What can I say, it's bowling. You line your guy up, aim, throw the ball, give it some aftertouch, hope the physics give you a strike then repeat that until you've bowled a whole game and get the final score. You get to pick some options like ball size, isle slipperiness, right or left handed and how many players will compete, you move the guy left and right on the isle with the left action buttons and aim/shoot with the lower right action button, you can see each player's current score by pressing the corresponding number key during gameplay.
Atlantis (Intellivision)
A Missile Command clone with some cool special features like a shmup ability where you ge to send out a ship to shoot down the incoming enemies but it had an energy limit of 90 second, you need to land and recharge to use it more, it can also be destroyed while in action.
Sonic Generations (Xbox 360)
An awful game with virtually no positive, everything is bad, bad visuals, bad framerate, strange super low screen resolutions at times, tons of super simplistic "3D" models (as in a lot of basic sprite stuff you'd expect to see in old 32-bit generation games) bad, inaccurate and laggy controls, bad, inaccurate and glitchy physics, no camera control, camera glitches, long load times, horrible voice acting, garbage script, wildly unfitting voice actors, characters act inaccordingly to their personalities and feel completely rebooted and out of place, bad level design, bad audio design, almost complete lack of exploration 99% of the time, super excessive use of forced on-rail segments where you have little to no control (you can sometimes use boost to make them go by faster but that drains the boost bar), poor placement of hidden star pickups forcing repeat gameplay in the laziest of ways imaginable (literally in one stage you have three right next to each other directly after a jump you can't control with three ways to jump and no way to return and grab the other two, simply pick one jump one time you play through the level, then the second during a second playthrough and finally the third during a third playthrough, it's as forced and boring as it gets, no skill involved, just rinse and repeat thee times over, it's mindless, boring and repetitive, and it's by far the most commonly used design choice for every single thing in this game), speaking of the boost, you have a button that boosts you forward, killing enemies automatically and stuff, making the already ultra linear and on-rail designed gameplay even more linear and on-rails, it fills up with everything you do, even moving the analog stick during on-ail jumps gives you points that charge your boost meter so you can use it to skip even more gameplay, on top of that you also have lots of upgrades you can buy, from points you get for completing and replaying stages, that make the game even more automatic and easy to breeze through, it's like they went to every extreme to make the game as unplayable and skippable as possible because they weren't going to put anything good in there anyway so why make anyone suffer through it, literally the levels are quite big in size but take only a couple of minutes to get through, they feel a lot longer becuase it's just several minutes of watching sonic "go fast" without much if any interaction, so basically you can watch a playthrough on youtube and get a virtually identical experience, there's so little gameplay here it's almost not even warranted to call it a game, there are a few extra challenges you can play as well, like racing against another charcter to the end of a level with a timer, or collecting rings with a timer, or using invincibility to walk across spikes etc. to reach the end of a level while on a timer, and so on.
Sonic The Hedgehog (Xbox 360, the unlockable Mega Drive version available in Sonic Generations after purchasing the Mega Drive controller in the shop for 7777 points and using it on the Mega Drive console above Green Hill zone)
The one potentially good thing about this game was that it came with the original Mega Drive version of Sonic The Hedgehog, except ofcourse it's not the original version, it's a ported version with some glitches and omissions, first off it runs in a window, so it's not full screen, not even close, the level select code don't seem to work and there are tons of little glitches that the original definitely didn't have, finally the audio has been remade so it sounds different, same musical compositions and the same kind of sound effects but it all sounds different, not sure if I would count that as a negative or a neutral as it technically doesn't sound "worse", it's more a matter of if you want it to sound authentic or not, if you do then it's a clear negative, if you don't care then it's okay, I guess, on a final tiny positive note they did fix the insta-death if you touch spikes while temporarily invincible after having been hit by something and lost your rings, so I guess that's something, still, it's a lesser version of the original and it doesn't even slightly begin to make up for the shitty main Sonic Generations game.
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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
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.
September 5th:
It's my 32nd birthday, finally I reach the original PlayStation's 32-bit generation age! (trust me, it's a VERY big deal to a gamer).
No second-hand stuff this time, just brand new things all across the board.
3DS:
Tenkai Knights Brave Battle
PlayStation 3 accessories:
2x Bluetooth headset
USB headset
PlayStation Vita accessories:
Smart Case
Disney Infinity:
Helen Parr/Elastigirl
LEGO Star Wars:
Jawa Sandcrawler polybag
Nanoblock:
Blue Whale Skeleton
Dinonix
Human Skeleton
Pteranodon
Stegosaurus
Triceratops
Tyrannosaurus Skeleton
Space Station
Nanoblock+:
Hello Kitty - Kitty's House
Hello Kitty - Yacht
Other Notable Gifts:
2x buckets of cotton candy
4x Red Bull energy drinks (to drink while playing WipEout 2097 for authentically increased reaction speed)
4x Milka chocolate bars
I also took a trip to a local second-hand shop and found some additional goodies.
PlayStation 2:
Colin McRae Rally 2005
Hugo CannonCruise
Kart Racer
Madagascar Escape 2 Africa
Midnight Club
The Simpsons Game
Comics:
Scooby-Doo!
Manga Pocket:
Chobits Vol. 1
Inu-Yasha Vol. 9
Inu-Yasha Vol. 24
Kemono To Chat Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 1
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 2
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 3
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 4
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 5
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 6
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 7
Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 8
Tokyo Mew Mew Vol. 2
XXX-Holic Vol. 13
ことばの学習 (Language learning) まんがで覚・える (Remember by comic) 反対語・同意語 (Autonym and Psynonym)
(ことばの学習 まんがで覚・える 反対語・同意語 The opposite words and synonyms that you can remember in the language learning manga)
(反対語・同意語 まんがで覚・える ことばの学習 Learning words that can be memorized in opposite words / synonymous comic books)
Manga DVD:
Pompoko
School Rumble Collection - Vol. 1-6 (6 DVD Box Set)
DVD:
Kirikou Og Trollkvinnen (norwegian edition of the original 1998 Kirikou animated movie)
The Muppet Show - Series 1 (4 DVD Box Set)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 13th:
Went second-hand shopping today, found some stuff.
DVD:
Cube
Planet 51
Comics:
Archie
Ducktales
Garfield
Scooby-Doo!
Tarzan
Tom & Jerry
Books:
Barbie
Beverloo
Disney's Aladdin
Disney's Aristocats
Other:
Hot Wheels Monster Jam Grave Digger
Hot Wheels Monster Jam El Toro Loco
a very long legged doll
a shoebox of assorted Lego
More 3DS and other portable stuff mainly this months as my TV remains broken.
Star Fox 64 3D (3DS)
It's a good remake of the Nintendo 64 game Lylat Wars, with a good visual upgrade and everything else kept very intact, the controls are fine and it plays smoothly, the biggest complaint for me is that it's too much like the original Lylat Wars in that they've added virtually nothing new beside the better visual quality, for example they could've easily added a cleaned up, high-res, smooth high framerate and stereoscopic 3D enhanced version of the original StarWing, as they never released the original Super Nintendo game as a port to the Game Boy Advance like the fans cried out for for so many years, sure there was the superior third-party game on GBA called Star X which had far better visuals and that played with a nice, high and smooth framerate than StarWing, but without the Nintendo brand recognition it sadly never become more than a hidden gem.
Star Fox 64 3D is still a good game if you can find it cheap enough, I got the Nintendo Selects version which is like a Platinum, Essentials or Classics type of cheaper re-release, so it can thankfully be found for an acceptable price these days for those who are interested.
UPDATE August 3rd
Beat it around 17:40 using no continues, it's short and easy but it has multiple paths to play through so it's got replay value for multiple playthroughs.
Space Debris (PlayStation)
A European exclusive that has many similarities to Lylat Wars (aka Star Fox 64) on Nintendo 64. I personally like this game a lot more than Lylat Wars, or any of the StarWing games for that matter, it has better level design, better balanced challenge, better visuals, better controls, no annoying sidekicks with awful voice acting that you need to constantly save from their own inability do the simplest tasks without screwing it up and getting themselves into needless trouble, far better bosses and better variation in the mission types.
It has both the on-rail and free-flight type of levels, just like Lylat Wars, but it does a better job with the level design and mission parameters so they feel more varied and less repetitive than anything Lylat Wars has to offer.
The weapon powerup and shield pickups are nicely implemented by shooting entire waves of enemy ships, strongly encouraging you to go after whole sets of enemies rather than just blasting away aimlessly at as many single targets as possible, excellently focusing the gameplay challenge on a nice flow of continues amounts of action.
I like the characters and the story, the voice acting is great and the game does an overall good job telling the story and getting you interested in what's happening without coming off as needlessly clichéd, stiff, shallow, overly dramatic without the sufficient payoff to validate such drama or plain stupid, unlike Lylat Wars which fails miserably on all these fronts.
It's a shame Space Debris was a PAL exclusive as it greatly limited the exposure of this great game.
V-Rally (PlayStation)
V-Rally 2 (PlayStation)
Maze Hunter 3-D (Master System)
Xyanide Resurrection (PlayStation Portable)
Been using the Notes and Graffiti features to draw some doodles on 3DS.
Roswell Conspiracies Aliens, Myths & Legends (Game Boy Color)
It's a really great game, the first two missions are a bit on the challenging side but you get some vehicle stages and a boss fight that are a lot more manageable after that, I haven't gotten much further than that yet but I'm really loving this game so far, one of the best games on Game Boy Color I've ever played.
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.
Februari 22nd:
The first order of 2017 has arrived!
Mega Drive:
Kawasaki Superbikes
Game Boy Advance:
Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge
PlayStation:
Loaded
PlayStation 2:
Taito Legends 2
V-Rally 3
Started off februari with playing Conan on Xbox 360 again.
Conan (Xbox 360)
It holds up very well even now in 2017, 11 years after it came out. The only thing with any shortcomings at all is the visual part, but for a 2006 game it still looks great, with only minor specifics showing any sign of ageing, it's by no means an ugly game though. It's bloody and gory, action filled and with many uncensored topless women to shake your analog stick at.
Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes (PlayStation 3)
Just playing around a bit. It's still no great game by any stretch, it remains an overhyped tech demo and mostly a bad one at that given all the glitches and limitations and stuff, but it's easy to come back to even if only for a short burst of gameplay every now and then.
Simple 1500 Vol. 91 The Gambler (PlayStation)
Just testing a random game, the gameplay was just betting on different gambling games and reading character dialog I didn't understand because it was all in japanese, a complete waste of time had it not been for a sexy big boobed lady in a red dress, that was at least something to look at every now and then.
Chaos Break (PlayStation)
A hidden gem survival horror third-person shooting action game with voice acting that challenges and maybe even surpasses the likes of Resident Evil, House of the Dead and CastleVania Symphony of the Night, yeah, it's that awesome. It plays very well, has some cool moves and such, I really like it a lot so far and will keep playing.
Speed King Neo Kobe 2045 (PlayStation)
Konami's attempt at futuristic hover racing. It's Stiff and ugly compared to even the first WipEout and it's a pure racing game with no pickups or other abilities, but it still feels like it manages to stay slightly above the level of some other games like it from those days. It's not great but it's at least something and I kinda wanna play some more and see if it gets better, I know there are some really cool unlockable ships like the Vic-Viper from Gradius so I at least wanna try to acquire that.
Die Hard Trilogy (PlayStation)
A classic I've been wanting to revisit for a while now, it's still tons of fun. I still love Die Harder the most, the on-rail shooter, it's so damn detailed and fun, I absolutely love it. Die Hard With A Vengeance, the driving game, remains my second favorite, I love just driving around causing havoc and finding cool hidden vehicles. Die Hard, the third-person shooter, remains the one I struggle with the most, it has great stuff in it but it also has some annoying parts, like the end-of-level bomb timers and the stiff controls, it's still good and fun for the most part though.
OutRun2 (Xbox, playing on Xbox 360)
A modern classic and it holds up well, it runs a bit less smoothly on Xbox 360 than it does on original Xbox but is still fully playable and enjoyable.
OutRun (Arcade, playing in OutRun2 on Xbox 360)
The arcade original is an unlockable for OutRun2 on Xbox. I never got to try this on my original Xbox before it died but when played on Xbox 360 there are some visual glitches with sprites not lining up correctly, beside that it runs smoothly and as it should and it's still fully playable.
Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (Entertainment System)
One of the first game I ever got and a favorite to this day, incredible game with varied and incredibly deep gameplay, great music, great visuals, smooth controls and a story that makes most RPGs at the time and for many years that followed look shallow by comparison, and it's a movie licensed 8-bit generation game doing this!! It defies all logic in the best possible ways.
Earthworm Jim (Mega Drive)
This game was fun back in the day and it's still fun, slightly better than I recall if anything.
Earthworm Jim (Super Nintendo)
This version usually gets the short straw after the Mega Drive version gets all the love, but I honestly can't pick a winner, they both have things the other lacks and in my book it's an even draw.
GoldenEye Rogue Agent (Xbox, playing on Xbox 360)
Damn this game is good, I love the manual dual wielding system of your weapons, the weapons themselves and the visuals look great. To date it's the only game with GoldenEye in the title that I like, if only the other games were anywhere near this good.
Kawasaki Superbikes (Mega Drive)
Finally got this game for myself, it's really good, with impressive flat-shaded polygonal 3D visuals and good driving physics and everything, there's even a turbo mode where the sprites are made smaller to make the game run faster if you wish to have a harder challenge and better sense of speed, I love this addition, it reminds me of the turbo mode in the excellent RollCage on PlayStation.
Hot Wheels Stunt Track Challenge (Game Boy Advance)
A very enjoyable and competent polygonal 3D racing game, similar to Lego Drome Racers in many ways. Unlike Drome Racers however the cars in Stunt Track Challenge are fully polygonal and even texture mapped, in Drome Racers all the cars were multi-sided sprites and only the tracks were polygonal. There's a stunt trick system that grants points and turbo boost power and there are offensive and defensive pickups. Thankfully the trick system in this is a much better way to bring variety and depth to the gameplay than the downright awful drag racing mode in Drome Racers.
Kill.Switch (Game Boy Advance)
A third-person 3D game, very technically impressive, but I'm not quite falling for it, maybe if I give it some more time.
Blades of Thunder (Game Boy Advance)
A 3D helicopter on-rail action shooting game, very enjoyable, reminds me a whole lot of the excellent Super Hind on PSP.
Monster Truck Madness (Game Boy Advance)
A rather enjoyable Monster Truck game with good gameplay and impressive 3D visuals.
Monster Trucks (Game Boy Advance)
An average game with some average 3D visuals and very little else to offer.
Monster Trucks Mayhem (Game Boy Advance)
An awful game with bad 3D visuals with nothing of value to offer.
Smashing Drive (Game Boy Advance)
It's choppy but it's still one of the more impressive 3D titles with lots of stuff to drive and smash through, featuring fully polygonal and texture mapped levels and vehicles.
V-Rally 3 (PlayStation 2)
After having enjoyed the fantastic GBA port for so many years it's at the very least interesting to finally get to play the proper console version, though so far it hasn't exactly impressed me, it looks fairly nice but there are downsides like minor stuttering in the framerate, minor screen tearing, no real-time reflections on the car and no controller configuration options whatsoever while not using the right analog stick at all and instead using X to accelerate, square to brake and circle to handbrake, to say the least it feels very archaic using this setup for a PS2 game even if the game is a relatively early release for the system having come out in 2001. The cars look nice though and the environments look on par with other rally racers of the time so it's not all bad. I guess I've just been spoiled by how good the GBA version was and how it pushed that system while this version on PS2 is far below what the PS2 can handle, even other rally games at the time were pushing the PS2 at least a little harder than this with better results.
Loaded (PlayStation)
Ah, the original Loaded, I loved this game back in the day and finally have a copy of my very own. I still love the sequel even more but this is an excellent game nonetheless and both are worthy additions to any PSX owner's library.
Taito Legends 2 (PlayStation 2)
A rather good collection with some excellent games included, and with heavy hitters such as RayStorm and G-Darius as PS2 exclusives this is the version to get I'd say, the emulation is also slightly better than in the Xbox version which was ported by another team of programmers using unoptimized M.A.M.E. emulation instead.
Elasto Mania (PC)
Haven't played this in 15 years, started playing, soon I had already set some new records. Good games never really leave your system even when you're apart for ages.
These are the games I've been playing this month.
Metroid II Return of Samus (Game Boy)
After I was disappointed by the turnout of the fanmade remake (turned out it was a full on reboot, not even close to remake, literally everything was changed and tons of stuff was added that was never in the original) I wanted to play the proper Metroid II instead, so I did.
It still sucks that Nintendo after less than 24 hours filed a DMCA report against the reboot and had it taken down as it wasn't a bad game, it was actually the second best 2D Metroid I've ever played after the brilliant original Metroid II. It fades in comparison to the original Metroid II, of course, and it doesn't hold a candle to Other M either, not even close, but it's still the third best Metroid game overall and second best 2D Metroid game in existence, so it still sucks Nintendo can't even let their own fans do what Nintendon't.
Top Gear Rally (Game Boy Advance)
F22 Interceptor (Mega Drive)
FlatOut 2 (PlayStation 2)
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
I've completed the drag races, they were easy, but the rest of the game is so hard I canät unlock any new stuff, so it's become a catch 22, I don't wanna keep playing unless there's new stuff to play with but I can't access the new stuff unless I play a lot and get much better at what little game is offering this early on. It's a low budget game but I feel I overpaid for what little I can get out of it without putting additional hard work into it, as if the hard work to get the money to buy the game wasn't enough, and what really sucks is that the stuff you have to unlock are fundamental features of the game like other game modes it brags about on the back of the box! That stuff needs to be instantly accessible or you're not allowed to use it as a selling point! Imagine if A Sonic game with Sonic on the front bragged about how this is the greatest Sonic game ever and you then have to play through it in hard mode with a generic military personnel guy character who is the only one unlocked to play as by default before you can even use Sonic!! FUCK THAT SHIT, MAN! THAT SHIT AIN'T RIGHT!
R:Racing (PlayStation 2)
Road Rage 3 (PlayStation 2)
Test Drive Unlimited 2 (Xbox 360)
Finally got hold of the sequel to Test Drive Unlimited, which instantly became one of my favorite games of the generation many years back when I got it as a birthday gift from my best friend. So far Test Drive Unlimited 2 has been okay, I like the upgraded and added stuff but I miss the things they've changed or removed.
It has a much more realistic physics engine making it a more simulation focused racing game than the first game, the visuals are upgraded as far as realistism goes and honestly look fantastic, but it all runs at a lower framerate in general and makes controlling your vehicle at high speeds much harder than it should be, they have cars that were missing in the first game like the Bugatti Veyron and they have proper offroad races now with Range Rovers and other offroad vehicles, but they've completely removed all motorcycles from the game, something I loved dearly in the first, if it wasn't for a free DLC pack containing a whopping three bikes there'd be literally none at all in this game, which is a shame, they've added licenses you need to pass in order to race and finally they've added a lot more cut scenes with characters interacting with lots of talking.
How all these things will affect the game for you depends on if you like them or not, personally I think some things like the visuals and driving physics being different are okay but I could've taken what the first game had only more fine tuned over changing them completely into this more realistic style, and the enforced licenses you need to pass, I don't remember there being any in the first game but they really slowed down this game for me, they could've been left out entirely, I also honestly don't care for the cutscenes much at all.
Beyond the island of Hawaii they've also added another island, Ibiza, to drive on this time, so there's more places to go overall than the first game had.
The rest of TDU2 is almost exactly the same as in TDU with similar races and other type of side missions, exploring and finding stuff and all that good stuff that made the first so much fun. Overall I'd say they complement each other well but I don't think the second game replaces the first as the only one to get, the first still has enough stuff that it stands strong alongside the sequel and I'd say get hold of either one of them to see if you like the overall formula first, then if you do, get the other one and enjoy what that one brings to the overall experience, they are both great games.
I do wish they would've only improved upon the first game rather than change and ruin some things while improving only some stuff though. What I mean is, I would've liked it a lot more if the sequel was more than just another great game. It should've been better than the first, not just equally good overall but for slightly different reasons.
The police work very different in this than it did in the first, I haven't had enough time to really look into it yet but they've added some unique modes this time around that have to do with the police, I haven't made up my mind about what I think about this yet though.
The system to earn money through jumps, powersliding and near misses I feel is okay but it should've been more forgiving with what counts as a collision as driving over tiny bushes or small rocks that you don't even notice and can barely make out on screen will mercilessly end your combos no matter what, I think it should've just been bigger things that can end it like hitting street lights, trees or other cars. I was trying to get the achievement for reaching the highest combo level 10 and it took over an hour to reach it once because literally the tiniest thing would end the combo, it became nothing but frustration and when I finally did it I got no satisfaction out of it at all, I only felt like I had wasted my time, time I could've spent having fun instead.
Nascar 08 (Xbox 360)
I've always wanted a game like Nascar but because the sport doesn't exist outside of USA it's only logical there haven't been that many game release here either, so I was happy when I now finally got hold of this game, and it was a modern one too so it should be extra good! Right? Eh, not really, it's not so much a Nascar game than it is a simulation of the sport, kind of like the Tour de France games aren't great bike racing games but very focused on the Tour de France sport specifically making them really boring to anyone who'd just love to race with bikes.
So yeah, this is not a game for racing fans but a game for Nascar enthusiasts specifically. It does offer some stuff for racing game fans as well but it's very clear where the focus is. The controls are the biggest problem as they are very lifelike for the sport and have done nothing to bridge the gap between how they work in real life and how you as the person playing gets up use them to play the game. It's literally unplayable with the normal settings and require you to manually make your own cars and stay away from the career modes and such to just be able to play the game at all.
I was able to get some enjoyment out of it but it really works against it if all you want is to drive around and have a good time.
I haven't played it a whole lot because of this so I can't say much more than that. It looks nice and has some really nice special effects like dynamic smoke and such, you can get some fun out of it, I just haven't had time to do so yet.
Metroid Prime (GameCube)
Trying to get through this garbage. Got the power bomb and running (read: slowly walking like a broken tank because the controls are ASS!!) around all over the fucking planet looking for stuff I can blow up to reveal new locations, oh what fun it is to run (again read as before) around aimlessly basically pixel hunting for hours until you randomly find the place the game wanted you to go. All this could've been avoided had it had the necessary linearity until the game was presented enough that free roaming would've been earned and welcome, too bad Nintendo (and to a lesser degree their lapdogs at Retro Studios) wouldn't know good game design even if they literally had it themselves just a decade or two prior to when this atrocity was released.
Tomb Raider (PlayStation)
Replaying again. In the Colosseum. It's amazing how much better this game holds up than most other early 3D games, equally sad is how awful the newer games with the Tomb Raider name in the title, as unfitting as it is considering there's nothing Tomb Raider about them, are in comparison to a game that is now 20 years old. Crystal Dynamics sure love to prove their endless incompetence. Not saying the new games with the unfitting Tomb Raider in their titles aren't okay games, some are even good in their own ways, but they're about as good Tomb Raiders as the Uncharted series and the Prince of Persia games a few years back. Giving monstrously different games a title with a legacy to live up to like the one Tomb Raider should never be done and I'm not afraid to call out the bullshit as it keeps coming. Thankfully they can never ruin the original games, they lack the time travel powers needed, and I for one am endlessly happy over this fact.
Playing some of the stuff I was playing at the end of Juni but also some of the new games I ordered.
Doom (32X)
The Ultimate Doom (the Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil version for Xbox played on Xbox 360)
Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil (Xbox, played on Xbox 360)
Quake 2 (Quake 4 Bonus Disc version for Xbox 360)
Quake 3 Revolution (PlayStation 2)
Quake 4 (Xbox 360)
I wanted to give this game a chance but damn it sucks, the framerate is atrocious, some of the worst I've seen on Xbox 360, the visuals are low res and look worse in many cases than Doom 3 and Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil do on Xbox, the gameplay is constantly interrupted by stuff having to do with the "story" and other marines that are with you, it freezes every now and then forcing me to reboot and the enemies disappear after they die so fast that I barely ever get too see what it was I was even fighting because the darkness is even worse than Doom 3 was making it hard to see anything at the best of times! Sure, some of the guns have built in flashlights but they're small and ineffective so most of the game is just fumbling around in the pitch black darkness not knowing what to do because the objectives are vague as shit and you have no map and most doors are locked making it an extremely linear experience where you mostly just run around in circles until you find the one door that can be opened now, they all the same with no indication they've been unlocked or anything either so it's really just about trial and error until you come across the right way to go. Also the turret sections are plenty and they all fucking suck. I doubt I'll be able to endure through to the end of this game, it's just wearing on me so much every minute feels like an hour. If only there was more action it could've at least kept my interest up a bit but enemies are far too few and generic, at least this early in the game, to be interesting to fight. A custom soundtrack with good music is a must, the game does not provide that for you so you have to bring your own tunes, that's fine, I have plenty on my Xbox 360 harddrive, but after how Quake 2 did everything so perfect and right it's very hard to cope with all these downgrades that Quake 4 brings to the table. Quake 2 is still one of the best games ever made and I love it to bits, this sadly is one of the worst games ever made and a terrible sequel in every sense and I wish they would've just left it in development hell for a few more years until they at least had a game that worked on fundamental levels unlike the fucking failfest this sadly turned out to be.
Ferrari Challenge Trofeo Pirelli (PS2)
Red Zone (Mega Drive)
This game is awesome, a top-down helicopter game with some on-foot missions. It's very impressive and does some really cool things to get 3D effects and such. The biggest flaw this game has remains the insane difficulty, much like Battletoads on Entertainment System it's a technical marvel and a pleasure to behold and play but you won't be able to breeze through it anytime soon. Thankfully this game, unlike Battletoads, has a password system with some nice codes for level select and stuff so it's far more lenient in that regard.
Mega Games 6 Vol. 2 (Mega Drive)
A nice collection of games containing Alien Storm, Super Thunder Blade, Super Monaco GP, Super Hang-On, Columns and World Cup Italia.
I'm mostly playing Alien Storm and Super Thunder Blade as I already have Super Monaco GP on separate cartridge and for the rest I only really like Super Hang-On and even then not that much, haven't tried World Cup Italia yet, I don't care for sports games, especially football and ice hockey they're just the worst, and I have many versions of Columns so I don't need to bother with that at all, I know exactly what it is and have played it plenty.
Alien Storm is awesome and it was worth getting this collection cartridge for that game alone, the rest are a nice and welcome bonus though.
Super Thunder Blade is a game I have other versions of as well so nothing new, I've played it plenty, but this is the first time I've played the Mega Drive original, closest I had before this was the version in Mega Drive Collection for PS2.
Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker (Mega Drive)
I don't care much for sports games in general, and pool, snooker, billiards and the like are no exceptions, but this is a 3D polygonal game on Mega Drive and it's made by the same guy who made the excellent Mercury games on PSP, Archer Maclean.
The Story of Thor (Mega Drive)
Beyond Oasis is a better name for it but the content remains the same. I recently played through this but now I have my very own copy and that's awesome! Didn't come cheap though, it remains one of the most expensive games on Mega Drive you can buy. I got it at a somewhat reasonable price compared to what I've seen on ebay and such places.
Top Gear Rally (Game Boy Advance)
Another good rally game for GBA alongside the excellent V-Rally 3. The graphics in this are similar to the original Need For Speed and 32-bit versions of Road Rash with scrolling 2D backgrounds at angles that make them appear as if they are 3D with textures, very nice looking. It plays well but the difficulty is up there, it's one of the harder rally games I've played. Between this, V-Rally 3 and Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and some other okay ones like GT Advance 2 Rally Racing it really makes me wonder why Sega Rally Championship turned out so bad, GBA can absolutely do good rally games and the older Sega Rally games were great so how they fucked up the GBA game so royally is beyond me at this point. Thankfully I don't ever have to play it again, I have several better racing and rally games for GBA to enjoy now so fuck you Sega Rally Championship on GBA, you suck and it was an absolute displeasure ever trying to play you. Hooray for good GBA rally games like Top Gear Rally!
Wing Commander Prophecy (Game Boy Advance)
A 3D space action flight-sim with good visuals and all. Another good game that helps prove that the GBA had a lot more to offer than just ports of old Super Nintendo games.
MTV Sports Snowboarding (PlayStation)
One of the very select few sports games I enjoy. It holds up very well. I always felt there were two good snowboarding games of that generation, this and Coolboarders 2, and of the two this is the better one by far, Coolboarders 2 is a bit more playful fun and has a nostalgic value to me more than anything, while this is an objectively superior and much more solid game.
Fade To Black (PlayStation)
This is the sequel to the classic platformer Flashback. It's not a perfect game but it's enjoyable and interesting. I succeeds with making me want to play on to see what happens next.
Stranglehold (Xbox 360)
A great third person shooter action game I go back to every now and then for a guaranteed good time. Also a good game to relieve some aggression in. It still looks fantastic, they really did a fantastic job on the technical side, it's a visual treat that set a high standard for other games to follow, maybe a little too high as not many has lived up to the same level, it's a very impressive game and with good gameplay to back up the technical and visual quality. I recommend this to all action fans out there, especially John Woo film fans and anyone who liked his movie Hard Boiled as this game is the official sequel to that movie.
Final Fantasy VII (PlayStation)
Disc 1, at Gold Saucer, got Yuffie.
Probotector (Game Boy)
Hard but awesome classic.
Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
Always fun to play through.
Bomb Jack (Game Boy)
A fun time waster.
Impact Racing (PlayStation)
Why is there no behind the car views in my game? When I look on youtube literally every video I see has at least two behind the car views to pick from beside the default bumper cam, one video had a guy even mention that you change views with the square button, but in my game there's no mention of being able to switch views in the manual for square, it just says square is the brake, which isn't correct either as square has no effect in game and braking is done by pressing down on the steering cross!
The screenshots on the back of the packaging of my game are only taken from bumper cam and no button or combination of buttons work in game to switch views.
I'm beginning to think the PAL release skipped including the behind the car views entirely. If that's the case this game will not get much play from me as it isn't particularly enjoyable to play in that view at all, which is why every video on youtube understandable has the person playing switching to a better view!
It's still somewhat playable as it is but I HATE driving in bumper cam and this game clearly wasn't made to be played that way. I can tolerate bumper cam only in some games, but this clearly has a behind the car view in every example i can find but my own copy, so why can't I just get it to work!? Ahh! Infuriating!
It still has awesome music though.
FlatOut 2 (PlayStation 2)
It was as I expected from having played the upgraded versions Ultimate Carnage on Xbox 360 and Head On on PSP. Beautiful to look at with lots of detailed destruction but virtually impossible to win a single race in due to skilled opponent AI and a driving physics engine that doesn't like you very much.
The ragdoll-launching minigames are still what I enjoy the most; driving a rocket-powered car down a ramp only to launch the driver out the front window of the car into some absurd oversized game arena like bowling or basketball just never gets old.
Raceway Drag & Stock Racing (PlayStation 2)
I couldn't test much as most stuff needs to be unlocked by playing through the championship mode, but the few races I could partake in were okay, the framerate was a bit choppy when all 16 cars were on screen at once during stock car races, but as they scattered a bit over the track after a lap or two it ran smoothly for the most part until the race was over. It reminded me of early Dreamcast games visually more so than any PS2 games from 2006.
R:Racing (PlayStation 2)
It's every bit as good as it was on Xbox last time I played it. Now I'd like to get hold of the GameCube version some day too for a complete set.
Turok Evolution (PlayStation 2)
Wow was this a mixed experience. It's kinda ugly for the most part, even for a 2002 release these are horribly dated visuals, in all honesty the older N64 Turok games look better than this.
It's pretty bland in gameplay as well, at least so far. I liked the idea of the flying sections that were a bit like Panzer Dragoon but sadly they had one hit kills whenever you touched anything, including the randomly spawning invisible walls!!
It became a test of patience as the frustration of having to reload the same sections again and again as I would just randomly die in mid air while far away from any visible objects, enemies or other dangers that could've killed me, and only sometimes I'd die in the same place, mostly it changed at random, but after countless tries and three hours later trying to get through a part of the game that otherwise would've taken less than half an hour I got past it and was back doing the normal FPS stuff again. However, later segments of the game become very long and because this game has no in-game checkpoints it's back to the beginning of the entire level every time you die, which can also happen at random for no apparent reason now just like in the flying missions which were super short and took over three hours due to this bullshit!! I'm not doing that with levels that are already long as they are without having to restart them at random intervals.
Sky Odyssey (PlayStation 2)
An adventure game in flight simulation form. It's hard and requires precise flying from the start. I've managed to get past the first level but that's it.
I love that it allows you to customize your place a bit. I'd love more options to do so but a paint job and emblem editor are nice and I appreciate it even if the emblem editor is the weakest I've ever encountered in a game and nowhere near what you can do in Rage Racer, R4 Ridge Racer Type 4 or the Armored Core series.
I'm impressed by how detailed the flying physics are, they simulate airflow in a way no other game I know does.
An interesting thing to note with this game is that while it's a very early release for the PS2 it still has a 60hz option, making this the earliest and oldest PS2 game with a 60hz option that I'm aware of.
Britney's Dance Beat (PlayStation 2)
I've always wondered what this game was like. Now I know. It's a very basic rhythm game with a Britney Spears theme. Not much more to say. I am terrible at rhythm games in general and this was one of the hardest and least forgiving ones I've ever played, which is weird as you'd think a game for Britney Spears fans would be more lenient to non-gamers, beginners and people like me with no sense of rhythm, so I couldn't get anywhere in the main Audition mode and I can safely say I'll never ever be able to unlock Britney. Yeah, the Britney pat of the game feels very tucked away as anything to do with her and fanservice of her is locked away and needs to be unlocked before you can see or use it. You'd think she and the fanservice stuff like music videos etc. would be the stuff you had unlocked by default and other characters and stuff would come later seeing as this is a product for fans of her first and a dance and rhythm game second, but it feels like the opposite is true.
Road Rage 3 (PlayStation 2)
An excellent drift racing game, easily the best in that genre that I've played. Sure, there are other racing games I love even more that has similar things in it like DT Racer, but as a game focused on this type of racing it does an excellent job at what it does and is a lot of fun to play, and successfully pulling off long consecutive drifts both up and down tight and technically challenging mountain roads feels endlessly satisfying.
It runs silky smooth and looks fairly nice too, nothing overly impressive to look at but at least it has no issues with the framerate. I just wish they could've had some proper reflections on the cars.
A fun fact to note is that this game, while originally developed and published by Atlus in Japan it was published by the infamous Phoenix Games here in Europe. As far as I know that makes for the only good game they've ever published.
The Getaway Black Monday (PlayStation 2)
Well this was a disappointment. It's uglier than the original Getaway, it has a much worse framerate, it controls worse with much worse vehicle crash physics, there's lots of glitches and I even saw hug chunks of the graphics pop in and out of existence while I was standing still so you can't blame it on loading new geometry, it was just glitchy, and some parts were just not there, you could see through the ground and nothing I did changed that, going away and coming back so the game loaded the area again changed nothing, it's just poorly made it seems.
That being said it's still an okay free roaming game with a nice big chunk of London realistically recreated in virtual form and there is still some fun to be had, the first game just did it much better is all.
Starsky & Hutch (GameCube)
A good version of the game but I prefer the GBA version a lot more. If anything this makes me appreciate the GBA version even more as it manages to do almost everything this version does but on infinitely less powerful hardware and more streamlined, this takes forever to do anything and feels drawn out and convoluted by comparison. Still, it's nice to have another GameCube game as that part of my collection is crippled by default due to GameCube not having a lot of games I want, so any game that can help fill it out a bit is most welcome.
Metro 2033 (Xbox 360)
This is literally unplayable. The forced auto walking ruins it. I've already died multiple times simply because I can't stop the character from walking over edged falling to his death and I've just started playing, it's a whole project trying to line him up to press a button because he just walks past everything! It's broken by design. I don't understand how anyone can play this. By far the worst controls in any game I've ever played spanning the last 30 years. At first I thought it may just be some really obscure glitch but i found nothing online about it and it's there with all controllers I have, no settings change this, I've tried rebooting, I've tried installing the disc, I've tried deleting all the game data and nothing i do changes it so as bad as it is I guess they wanted it that way. It's unbelievably bad yet I've read or heard nothing about this as a complaint anywhere? I don't get it. How does anyone cope with this?
He just auto walked through a wall so I skipped a whole part of the level and ended up in some completely other scene I haven't seen before. This is the glitchiest game I've played in a long time.
For "fun" (as in desperation) I went to my storage and dug out one of my old original Xbox 360 controllers, I have two and they're both broken in different ways so I got the one that at least sporadically works, and plugged it in via my old half working charge & play cable and battery pack because I thought to myself this is the only thing I haven't tried yet and it's not going to work but at least it'll be more fun trying to see how little this thing works than actually trying to play this crap with a working controller.. turns out it's the only controller I own that doesn't have the auto walking problem so I've been trying to use it to play the game for a while and I can't say I wanna change my score at all, this game even with working controls is awful with constant in-game cutscenes (if they only wanted to make a horror b-movie why did they make a game in the first place?), quick time events, glitches out the fracking wazoo (now IA characters and enemies glitch through walls as well, so it wasn't just my own character earlier who can do it, it's a feature everyone can enjoy!!), lackluster weapons, dark and unevenly detailed visuals (doom 3 on original Xbox feels like it's played out outdoors on a bright sunny day compared to this), the one thing I've liked so far was a hot prostitute looking character that walked past as I was contextually forced to sit at a table and drink alcohol while listening to some dialog I cared nothing about as she disappeared as quickly as she popped up outta nowhere. I hate how there's no good display of information, everything is hidden away so you're getting little to no tactical feedback and then there are all the little things, for example like how you can't have the pointer "compass" on screen without having everything else tucked away, you can't even run with it because the character keeps flailing his arms madly if you do so you can't look at the damn thing telling you where to go to trigger the next drawn out uninteresting in-game cutscene you're forced to sit through until the next uneventful and glitchy context sensitive event happens, or how the AI is mentally retarded and just sits in corners not doing jack shit letting you kill whole rooms of enemies on your own until you've reached the next context sensitive point where the AI finally understands that it's time to do something, like open a door because our hero is too fucking incapable of doing such demanding tasks apparently.
This game has very rapidly become a strong top contender for worst game of the previous generation + all time for me.
Metro Last Light (Xbox 360)
I couldn't take anymore of 2033 so I decided to give Last Light a go in hopes that after years making a sequel they'd at least learn to program walking or realise how awful the constant interruption of gameplay with context cutscenes were or some kind of improvements or problems fixed. But no. They did not. All the same problems are here even the auto walking makes a return making it equally as unplayable as 2033. I am gobsmacked by this developer's ineptitude.
So I've been trying to try out Last Light some more to see if a single thing has been fixed or improved over 2033 at all (spoiler: nothing has been fixed or improved, in fact some things seem even worse, more incomplete and glitchier than in the first game) I stumbled across this funny little thing.
While allowing the game to auto walk, as they both love to do against my will except with my broken controller I can't use anyway, turns out even the game itself seems to realize it's not suppose to be doing that shit as the fucking idle animations started playing while he was still walking! While walking forward he starts checking his gun and counting his bullets and stuff.
It's beyond words at this point so I'm just gonna pretend I never played either of these and never had the money I bought them with and never bought them and they don't exist at all, at least then maybe I'll be able to sleep at night after this.
I am now officially done with this shit, no more Metro for me ever.
