The Original Playstation

Ace Combat 3

2009-09-13T11:04:30+02:00

The most forgotten of all forgotten games this. There was, of cause, Ace Combat 1 and 2 that everyone remembers, but these were arcade games. I mean proper arcade games. From the arcade and everything. You remember those places right? Ace Combat 3 on the other hand is an arcade flight combat game i.e. real physics will not be found here but it never saw the inside of a dark and dingy arcade, it's cabinet was never stained with cigarette tar.

So, nobody remembers AC3. Why? The Euro and US versions of this game arrived in the West mutilated. For whatever reason, read 'laziness', Namco stripped the Japanese version of Ace Combat from 50 missions to 30 missions and then removed all the Anime story line and then released it in Europe, America and Australasia. Thanks to this spoilage, most reviewers at the time bemoaned AC3 Electrosphere and condemned it to the land of forgotten games. Which is frankly no more than Namco deserve for this sloppy treatment of a great game.

And it is a great game, it really is. The first thing that strikes you about Ace Combat 3 is just how utterly amazing it looks. It is quite fiercely one of the crowning graphical achievements of the Playstation 1. As you sweep over cities and mountains and islands, and as you dog fight enemy craft, you'll see a lot of the features that were in Ac4 already in AC3 on the PS1. You have replays, which look pretty cool, external views that you can examine your aircraft and a missile-cam. The sense of speed is impressive as you fly along and the detail of the 3D models, from the aircraft, to the sky scrapers, to the tunnel walls is all very impressive. The cut sequences, which in some cases are generated using the games 3D engine, also look pretty good too. Graphically, AC3 stands out from the crowd.

Despite the story being all but stripped, this is the gist of it: General Resource Ltd and Neuwork Inc are the two massive corporations locked in a dispute that is threatening all-out global war. Your job in the game as part of a New United Nations is to stop that. Naturally, peace can only be achieved by shooting and killing and a good deal of insane aircraft piloting.

So, it's the usual Ace Combat affair; blow up some ships, shoot down some planes, bomb some radar installations, fly down a valley and of cause fly down some underground tunnels. Ace Combat wouldn't be Ace Combat without some ludicrous underground section. AC3 doesn't disappoint either, there is fairly large chunk of underground flying, and has a large underground city too. Hey, Electrosphere is set in the future! The only minor gripe is the weedy mega-ship. As most fans of the series know, there is usually a giant flying aircraft to pound the hell out of in AC games, and AC3 has them too, but in AC3 are kind of weedy. However, there is a mission in space which no AC had ever done before, or indeed ever done again, which sort of makes up for that.

So who should play this? Retro Graphics Whores certainly. Anyone who was a fan of 1990's Japanese Cyberpunk. I'm huge fan of Bubblegum Crisis, Genocyber and Oedo 808 and this game, also based in the Artificial Intelligent future is clearly influenced by these, and anyone rooting round looking for something retro Playstation to play.

Ignoring the fact there is no story, AC3 remains a very playable shooter. The difficulty is balanced, the game fun and the journey, if not detailed in the narrative sense, is in the visual sense very enjoyable. I can also recommend the soundtrack, that while owing a nod to the Ridge Racer school of soundtracks, is a touch more soulful than it's road based stable mate, and does embrace the cyberfuture megalopolis theme of AC3 well.

It ain't rare and you should be able to pick up a copy for a few quid.

3DOKid.

Comments

Gran Turismo

2008-11-23T13:13:42+01:00

Where do you start with Gran Turismo? It's sold almost 11million copies. There are 178 cars in the game. There are 11 tracks and bunch of sequels.

That do?

No – okay.

It's been 10 years since GT was first released, so it's probably been around 9 years since I last played it and things have changed. The cars look dated.

The RX7 looks old. DB7 looks old. There are cars with pop-up headlamps. It feels like upper-class banger racing. It's weird. These cars were once, for the most part, desirable. Now they have all been superseded.

The game still looks amazing mind you. If you squint, and make your eye's go all blurry, GT does look almost real.

I remember playing this the first time, and what is obvious, is that the 3DOKid of 10 years ago, wasn't blessed with same patience of 3DOKid of today. For starters, the mandatory license scheme didn't bore me to tears. In fact, this time round it actually felt like part of the game, not some needless chore. And, I passed them much quicker than previously. Perhaps that is because this time around I have an actual driving license, or because I have played other driving games, and I've learnt a few cornering tricks from them. Whatever, 30 Minutes in I had a B license and an A license.

So to pick a car. As I recall, the first time around a picked a Mazda MX-5. A good choice, but for all the wrong reasons. I think ten years ago I believed all cabriolets were faster than other cars. And the idea of balance, weight, performance and upgradeability never crossed my mind.

This time, for god knows what reason, I picked a Toyota 70Supra. Powerful? Yes. Handling? Upgradeable? Light? No – no it isn't. I should have picked the Mazda RX7 FC or Toyota MR2 but then, I'm an idiot and emotion and wild car fantasies got the better of me.

So – to race.

GT takes no time once you start racing to reveal it's true colours. It sort of punishes you in one respect, and rewards you in others. Cornering in GT is tough. Hell, braking in GT is tough. Thinking about it, hitting the curb in GT is tough. This game isn't easy. Every car is different. Properly different. Every minor tweak or modified part has a tangible effect. And learning and re-learning how to drive each car? Well, is that a chore or part of the game? The answer, is that's part of the game. To play and enjoy GT, you have to face that. GT is not about streaking past the chequered-flag two-miles ahead of your opponents. Which is where most people get stuck.

You see GT is not Need for Speed. It's not Ridge Racer. What it is, is a car fanatics wet-dream. For normal people, and I'm borderline, GT must appear to be quirky at best, perhaps anal, at worst simply boring.

You can see the people that didn't step-back with GT and have a think. Where is the damage model they ask? Why doesn't the weather change? Why doesn't it get dark.

In reality see, GT is more like an RPG-come-Collect 'em up than a competitor for Ridge Racer.

That said, if you pick the right race, with the right car, with the right settings then GT is perfect. It's almost magical. The sense of being in a race is epic. It's a genuine real thrill.

Pick the wrong race, with wrong either the wrong settings or the wrong car and you enter GT hell. But then, for car fanatics, GT Hell is actually GT heaven. The game is about properly modifying cars, trying to not create the car with the biggest BHP (Break Horse Power) but about making a balanced racing car. At the time, and even today, that's unusual. I'll say it again, the best car in GT is the one that wins races. Not the fastest, not the most expensive and certainly not the prettiest.

You start with 10,000 credits. Blow it on the wrong car or the wrong upgrade, and GT is the most frustrating game in the world. And the only way out? RPG-like 'grind'.

Grind in GT is racing the same easy race over-and-over-and-over-and-over again, to earn enough cash, to simply stick on the right stabilisers, tyres and suspension, that you wish you had bought when you were blowing all your money on a Stage 4 turbo that just makes the car bounce off of the rev limiter, makes it go too quick, so it can't stop, and when you catch it just wrong, every corner has you pirouetting off the circuit like drug addict at a ballet school.

If game-grind gets you down, collecting every car will slay you. Like Pokemon, you gotta catch 'em all. From the boring Nissans to the exotic Astons, one of each must be in your garage.

If you don't like that. Then don't play.

GT is engrossing if you approach it with right frame of mind. Forget about winning races, and think about cars. Then think about making your car the best. Then you can enjoy it.

This game is truly ground breaking. One of the most important games ever made but it is a game. And the question is, is it fun? The truth is, not for everyone.

3DOKid.

Comments

Need For Speed - Porsche Unleashed

2008-11-18T18:06:02+01:00

Hold on to your bladders. It's going to be a triple-shocker! That's right, first-off, it's not another bloody SHUMP, which in it's self is staggering. Not least of all because I have a copy of Raiden DX on constant play on my PSP, and it's awesome. Shock number two, is that it's an NFS game. That's right: Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed. And thirdly, it's awesome too. Yep. Need for Speed – Porsche Unleashed is brilliant.

Now, you know me, and maybe you don't, but I like emotion in my games. I'm a big graphics whore, I make no secret of that, and I like driving games. I also pick-no-bones over the fact, that by and large the best driving games are the most modern. The best car related game I have played ever was Grid by Codemasters. I liked Grid because it simply is that good. Before that, I felt PGR4 was the best. On something called an Xbox 360 – whatever that is. PGR4 was placed in the ranks of 3DOkid love because it wasn't perfect, but it dripped emotion. The people who made PGR loved cars. In the same way Raystorms creators loved SHUMPS.

Not perfect, but epic. There is something about it, that makes you smile.

To say I love NFS Porsche Unleashed, today, in 2008, means it's pretty special.

So what's to love?

Firstly, Porsches. I do love Porsches. All Porsches. The 356, the 924, the 928, the 911, Turbos, RS', all of them. They are all awesome. You can keep your unreliable Italian trash, and your bloated half wooden anglo-battleships. Porsches are the greatest cars ever made. Ever. And I won't hear another word on the issue.

Next thing I love is the graphics. I picked one of the modes, don't ask me which one, go and read one of those reviews based on the game manual if you want to know that. Anyway, I picked a mode, picked a car; a handsome golden 356B cabriolet, with a green roof, and I started the pre-race qualification. In the snow. In Germany. To say I nearly wept for sheer joy, was, perhaps, something of understatement. Porsches? Snow? Germany? No combination of gaming goodness has brought me so close to a platonic love with a black disk, crammed with ones and zeros, than ever before.

If I wasn't so afraid of the wife catching me, I would have taken that disk on a two-hour knee trembler. Oh-how-I-love-this-game.

Is that clear?

Listen, the snow was falling! On my 356. In the snow. In Germany. Dare you imagine?

So, I took my 356 and started flinging it around corners. The first thing I noticed was it was true Sim-arcade. And god bless Electtronic Arts for that. The little car realistically performed a turn the Anthill Mob would have been proud of. This is not a bad thing. All the fun of real cars doing things that are simply impossible in the real world.

The other nice thing was damage. Well, to be fair it was and it wasn't. It was encouraging to see the PS1 pulling off such great things as car damage. Scratch the front wing, and behold, the front wing of the car is scratched. Very good. Still, it kind of ruined the replays. Especially for a Porsche-Graphics whore.

Now we come to an iffy part of this write up. Deep breath. Pause. I actually own one of the cars in the game. A black 911 Carrera.

Yeah. Okay. Whatever.

Now you finished ushering profanities, declaring this 'the worst I've got a Porsche' blog entry ever and waving your finger about guessing the size, incorrectly, of my manhood. You have one question right?

Is the game anything like the real thing?

No. Not at all.

The game is better.

Like I said; Cartoon handling, and exaggerated performance. For example, achieving 147Mph (237Kmh) is possible, of cause it is, it's just not that likely on a rough looking single track country road. Plus the acceleration of the game version of my 911, is much better than the real thing. You will also find, that if you press-the-hammer and accelerate away from the Police in excess of 120Mph, in any car really, the Police don't give up after a while. They really, really get the arse.

But that, in my opinion, is the beauty of the game. Gaming is fantasy. And this game lives up to that fantasy.

I am of the opinion however, that whoever wrote this game, was either under the kosh to produce an utterly loveable and completely stunning car game, one would assume Porsches legal koshes, or the good folk at EA loved Porsches too.

Now, there is one mistake. And all car games make the same one. The best car in this game is not the 911 (996) Turbo or the GT3. No. These cars lack charm, and they go too quick. And no, it's not my car. All games make the same mistake of believing the super-car is the best car, but true to every car game I've ever played, the most fun is to be had with one of the earlier cars. Namely in this case the 2.7 911 RS. It's fast enough. It looks great. It handles great. And the graphics are moulded to fit the cars era. It's perfect.

Finally, aside from my doubts over which car should be consider the best, this game is actually very good. In fact, it's better than good. It's brilliant. Fun, fast and emotive. Of the truly overlooked classics of the original Playstation, this game, is quite possibly, the best arcade-sim driving game on the PS1.

Yes – better than GT.

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleased. There is no substitute.

3DOKid.

Comments

R-Type Delta

2008-11-12T08:09:16+01:00

There is on the Internet, a sort of cult, and while the Freemasons apparently make Steve Guttenburg a star, this gaming-cult makes mediocre games stars. Endless retro-gaming lunatics banging on about good-honest-no-frills game play, when clearly they haven't played the game in 10 years. Because if they had, they would notice very few games can hold their own today, least of all these so called cult classics.

I'm not a member of this cult, obviously, I run a 3DO Blog and to make matters worse, a Playstation Blog, so I'm a pariah. But there is a cult, I promise you. Now, the power this cult has is astounding. It's members, which I reckon rank in the tens of thousands, actually think that Halo was some sort of seminal game, they believe that Zelda was more than just some hippy rubbish, and that Nights into Dreams was the exact opposite of confusing-tedium.

Madness, yes I know.

And woe-betide the fool that crosses them. I can cross them, obviously, they'll come on to my blog spew their bile and I'll just delete them, but you go onto a public forum and say them things. It's scary.

Well, another game that gets more than it's fair share of disproportionate love is R-Type.

Now R-Type was okay. I shoved a few ten-pence pieces into myself, but then I shoved ten-pence's into a lot of things. Pitfighter, I thought that that, at the time, was okay. Ironman Stewarts Super Off Road Racing was pretty good too I felt, and I bunged more money than was sensible into Namco's Winning Lap, which I was positively addicted too. Would I fight you to the death if you disagreed with me? Possibly, but for the sake of argument let's pretend I'm reasonable, so no. No I wouldn't.

Today's game poses a heart-yanking conundrum for the cult. You see, it's an updated version of R-Type. So according to the cult it's a sublime messenger of most excellent beauty gaming, but it's also a Playstation exclusive too, which means by the cults own belief system it's also Satan's rectal deposits on toast. It's like a Christian being informed that Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene were the same person. On one side over-love for R-Type and on the other deep irrational hatred of Playstation.

So then, R-Type Delta.

Hmmm.

Where to begin eh?

Difficult to know where to start really.

How about:

It's not as good as Einhander.

There I've said it, and I can't take it back. It's the truth.

Let me qualify that. The graphics are good in R-Type Delta, but not as good as Einhanders. Einhander has a lot more clarity. The organic-mecha feel of R-Type's environments are translated well to 3D, but lack the style of Einhander. Einhanders graphics are more refined, more engaging. They're just better.

R-Types sound track is also good, but lacks the punch of Einhanders. Einhanders tunes are edgy and have more personality than R-types. R-Types are good, better than Raystorms, but not as good Einhanders.

Graphics and sounds then. So?

Well, it is however how the game plays, that makes Einhander the better game. If you're going to put one game into one camp, and the other in another, then Einhander is challenging, R-Type Delta is frustrating. Very frequently while playing I got very angry with R-Types game designers. I have to push the craft against the wall, against the ceiling, it was the only way to survive, where is the skill in that? It feels ugly. By all means make a puzzle, make me think about where I positioning the craft, but don't make it feel claustrophobic. Certain situations you feel let-off rather than beating the challenge. The game carelessly kills you. In some ways, you feel you are fighting the level designer, rather than the game. R-Type delta feels like it's trying to prove a point to SHMUP fans, of which in Japan there are many, rather than make a great game.

That said, R-Type Delta is a great game. It is bloody good, please, don't get me wrong but it's not as good as Einhander.

There is sequence right at the start of the game where you feel like punching the air. This-is-great. You're flying along, figuring out how all the weapons look like their 2D counter parts in the original R-Types, only they are all in exciting 3D, and they look better and brighter, and suddenly a big green robot comes from no where. So you twat him with super-mega-laser blast and it immediately explodes. On the reward-o-player-o-meter this ranks pretty high. It feels better than great. Tint little space ship, great big laser, completely mushed big stompy robot.The next couple of bosses and levels are really rewarding too but then it starts to descend into picky and slightly irritating.

The ship, and I don't want to hark on about it, isn't as direct Einhanders. The weapons are R-type, but less rewarding than Einhanders, the bosses are R-Type but less inventive than Einhanders, the 3D, which is merely there for show-boating, is better in Einhander.

It's a close second, but very much second.

Still, I prefer I Raystorm personally, but there you go. Einhander was built by a crack team of assembled experts. R-Type Delta was built by hardened long serving professionals but Raystorm was built with heart and captures a feel for the time and era better than the others. Raystorm is1990s Japanese SHMUP, Einhander and R-Type Delta are extremely good SHMUPS. See?

If you own a Playstation, a 1, a 2 or a 3, or indeed a PSP, you owe to yourself to track down a copy of R-Type Delta, just make sure you get a copy of Einhander at the same time.

3DOKid.

Comments

Raycrisis

2008-11-08T16:32:46+01:00

Raystorm, bless its little cotton socks, followed a pretty well trodden path when it came to a scenery line. You start off flying over the Earth, attacking an invasion force, and eventually making your way into space to give the Mothership what-for.

This isn't exactly the most unique flow of scenery. Gekioh shooting king follows it, Rayforce followed it, all shooters seem to follow it. But who cares in honesty? It's not the scenery that's important, it's the shooting. Isn't it? Well, clearly, Taito seemed to think it was important.

Raycrisis is the last game in the Raystorm / Rayforce series, and it is the prequel to Rayforce. What is clear is that Taito wanted the series to go out with a bang. They clearly wanted Raycrisis to be the most unique SHMUP ever created. So, the question Taito asked, was clearly, how do we make Raycrisis a unique shooter?

The answer to this seemed to be to over-engineer everything. It some places it works. The plot is busy, the graphics are excellent but then the game mechanics are all over the place. And it just smacks of over industrious and a bit confused.

Take the plot: The Neuro-Computer Con-Human super computer gains sentience and rebels against it's human creators. Well, okay, so-far-so-Terminator. It, Con-human that is, rebels because a mad scientist tried to bond a human clone to the Supercomputer. Reason in itself rebel? I don't know. I never been there. The plot witters on, suffice to say, the only solution is for you piloting a Wave Rider, that's the name of your space ship, to go into this world and shoot stuff. That's a lot of theoretical science just so we can tap away at an X button.

This leads me to a general gripe about Japanese games. They plonk us in these highly convoluted worlds, taking part in highly convoluted stories, and our only contribution is shooting-shit. That's not a big problem, but I'd like a giant Raycrisis story book please. Plus a Raycrisis Anime and a Raycrisis model kit, because the hugely colourful Raycrisis universe looks great, and I'm interested in it, but all there is, is three SHMUPS – I want more. Well, my bank balance doesn't, but I do.

The only link we have to the Raycrisis Universe is the graphics. And in places they are awesome. Raycrisis graphics are best described as sci-fi book covers. Any geek worth his salt, and therefore on this blog, has spent many hours looking at the front covers of science-fiction literary works. Raycrisis looks like a bit of Asimov (Foundation series) combined with a bit of Ian M Banks. Obviously with a bit of Japanese sparkly flying about bits all over the shop. They're good, but a bit weird in places.

From the plot and graphics, this game does have some promise, but then it starts to descend into why-oh-why did they do that territory. In the quest for unique, like so many before them, Taito decided to toss "linear" in the bin. I mean if they had made it linear, like Raystorm was linear, no complaint right? But they didn't and the player can choose what level to play in which order. Sigh.

Raycrisis has better soundtrack than Raystorm. (Raystorm always seems to have elevator music.) but Raycrisis just doesn't feel joined up.

Add to that the disjointed feeling the ever joyous bullet-hell brings. Oh what great fun that is. Not. That's when the screen is full of bullets and the only thing you can do is die. It never really materialised in Raystorm, but Raycrisis is full of it. I don't know. Some people, namely the SHMUP hardcore, seem to thrive on it, but I hate it. The game doesn't have to kill me, incompetence, lack of dexterity and momentary lapses of concentration will do that, but it kills me anyway. And so that makes Raycrisis somewhat frustrating.

So it's hard, thanks to bullet hell, it's confused thanks to player choice, and the worst thing is the canon-fire and the ray-fire now must be on separate buttons. Madness.

The final nail in the coffin for Raycrisis, is what also slammed the lid tight on Metal Gear Solid 2 for me. Namely, a final level that was inspired by the drug 'Acid'. There is, and you will have to excuse the profanity again, only one way to describe the final level of Raycrisis, it goes like this: What the f**k?

Better graphics, worse level-order, better sound track, worse end level? Arrrrg! No.

I want to love Raycrisis, so much of it is right, but I can't and I know in my heart Raycrisis doesn't love me.

3DOKid.

Comments

Raystorm.

2008-10-28T00:51:06+01:00

I'm being sucked into another SHMUP.

I've always been a firm believer that part of the arcade experience that was left in the arcade, this was when the smoke-stained dimly glowing dinosaurs made the long march into the home thanks to the likes of Playstation, that the absence of ten-pence or indeed one-pound riding on a game, meant the game lost something.

That hook of one-more-go was gone. You tried, in my opinion, a little bit harder when death meant 33% of your weekly income went with it. It was also in the arcade makers vested interest to kill you as quickly as possible. The last thing Taito, or indeed any arcade maker wanted, was some show-off finishing the game on a single credit. That was bad for business.

You wanted to save money, while playing the game, the arcade vendor wanted you to spend money, while playing the game. So it all hinged on the game. Too hard and the customer was being robbed, too easy and the vendor lost revenue. So the first thing, the critical thing, was game-play.

That's all well and good, but what makes you put your money in the first place? Well, the spectacle of the machine. Easy during the days of Space invaders in the 1970s, relatively of cause, the machine itself was the marvel in those days, as the number of machine increased, and they pushed harder to grab your attention, it became more difficult. Eventually, the graphics had to have that WOW factor. Fewer people were going to shove fifty-pence into a dog-ugly game.

Finally, there is the experience. You can have great game play, you can have wow graphics and that will give you a great game, but if you can tie-in an epic experience, and then blend that with a particular cultural feel of the time, then your arcade game will conquer the world. It will be a legend.

That was until Playstation. A console where all the mighty power of the arcade, met with people who had never shoved more money than was sensible into a machine, while standing for hours in a smoke filled dingy-den. They didn't like dying in games. They measured value in terms of length of completion, which is marked against their initial capital expenditure and the spectacle became the all important.

It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different thing. After all, this model gave us games like Gears of War, Shadow of Colossus and Tomb Raider. Eventually however, today, it became the all conquering model.

So it's good that we can go back. Back to the likes of Raystorm. A game that reminds you of those feelings you had in the arcade.

Raystorm is a classic arcade machine. It's money stealing heritage is only a feint reminder of what perhaps the original arcade was capable of. It's hand-cuffed so to speak but it still plays the credit-game to extent by limiting the number of credits, that while isn't quite the same, it does force you to keep one-eye on the credit count.

The graphics are amazing. It's all in 3D, the engine throws the player around, they are luxurious and a pleasure to watch. It's like watching a a truly beautiful woman walk past, you simply have to look. I'm not being sexist - i'm just being truthful. Whatever it is, that feeling you get from looking at a Supercar or Supermodel or Supergraphics, that feeling of looking at something truly wonderful that gently lifts your heart - Raystorm has it.

Then there is the experience. There was a question raised recently 'Where are all the Japanese games?' I don't want to bash or slate American and European games, they have a look and feel, that when done well is second to none, but my heart will always belong to Japanese style 3D graphics. And this game is very-very 1990s Japanese. It's like Macross, meets Gundam, meets Anime, meets every beautiful cliche in video game that country has ever given us. From plunging across mechanised cities, down through valleys, across oceans and into deep space.

It's one hell of an experience. It's one hell of game. It's one hell of a time thief.

I really like this game. It's not as good as Einhander or R-Type Delta in many respects, but in the sense of it capturing the feel and look of the mid-nineties arcade in the home, it's actually a lot better.

I'm in just in awe of it.

3DOkid.

Comments

Clock Tower

2008-10-23T13:43:04+02:00

Clock Tower or rather Clock Tower 2 as it was called in Japan, but since Clock Tower was never released outside of Japan, it's okay to call Clock Tower 2, Clock Tower, but only in the West obviously. Just to clear that up.

The first question people always ask is what is it? It be a point-and-click survival horror based on a 2.5D graphics engine. The object being to have your character survive by not being chopped to bits by a giant scissors wielding maniac. Which is accomplished by running away, using various items to twat him with or climbing into closet or toilet or something. Think Leisure Suit Larry meets Resident Evil.

And you know what? It sort of half works. The developer, Human, managed to give the game a very John Carpenter Halloween feel, right down to the tinkle-tinkle piano music, composed with sole intention of scaring the bile out of me.

Also like the film Halloween, the game is set in absolute normality. A normal professor, a normal research assistant placed in normal settings. It has a normal hotel, a normal house, a normal office. Plus, the whole game is set in normal Norway. The only thing being that your characters are stalked by a blood drench hunch-back loony with a four feet-long piece of razor sharp stationary equipment. This works. The game has a very chilling edge to it but with just one caveat “Only in places...”.

You see, it only half works.

Firstly, it can be cripplingly boring. It takes forever for dialogue to finish. You can find yourself trapped in a room, unable to leave because some minor trigger hasn't been triggered. You must have had every conversation and have looked at every object before the game lets you leave. It's really irritating. Especially during the prologue. At points I longed for the Scissorman to release me from the purgatory of trying to figure out what I hadn't heard or indeed seen. Also, the characters never seem to really display any meaningful sense of urgency. There are two modes of walking. There is walk slowly to a point by pressing X and if you double tap the X button your character runs a bit quicker. What was needed, in my humble opinion, was perhaps a a triple tap of the X button to indicate I'm being chased by a psychopath. Because honestly, if I was chased by madman, I'd run a bit harder than if I urgently needed to look at a blackboard.

The in-game tension comes and goes too. For instance, when Scissorman is on your tail, when the slice-slice sound of his imminent arrival is announced, the game is indeed chilling. As the frequency of the slicing sound increases, fumbling with the game-pad can be nerve racking at best, especially while you are trying to figure where you can hide. As an aside, what you must not do is corner yourself, or have no escape route. If you do manage to corner yourself, and Scissorman is near, you will crap yourself. However, once I was cornered by Scissorman, so I sprayed him with mace that happened to be at hand, and he did nothing more than bugger-off for fifteen minutes, and I was left wandering the location, completely clueless as to what I am actually supposed to be trying to accomplish.

In fact the whole “great game”, “crap game” theme is carried on through out. It's like half the development team cared and the other half really didn't. A good example is stumbling across a dead body with a spike rammed through it. Your character sees it then buckles to the floor and vomits, it's not terribly graphic, it doesn't need to be, but it's done really well. A few moments later I walked my avatar into the security guards room, and I can see someone sat at a chair. Now it was the first person I had met since the action had really started, so double-clicked on him and lo-and-behold his head falls off, to which my character responds with what was tantamount to an 'Oh!'

It ruins the flow and kills the tension. Clock Tower was a brilliant idea, it's just the execution was a little lacking. What it needed was for someone to sit down with the game just after it was made and make a few minor suggestions, the whole thing could have tightened up with almost no effort, and this game could have been an all time classic. Sadly, it's not.

3DOKid.

Comments

Heart of Darkness

2008-10-20T21:23:43+02:00

So at some point, someone, is going to realise I'm not a terribly diligent game reviewer. And why should I be? I pay £3.00 for a game and it's rubbish. So what? Either you're a collector, at which point you don't care what I have to say or you're a muppet, and you waste money willy-nilly on games you're not interested in and your looking on the web to see if your fear are going to be confirmed. The other option is obviously is that you were a developer for this game, and you just Googled for it and up came this modernish review: in which case “Sorry”. Either way, there is not a lot I can do to help, and whether I play a game for thirty minutes or three days won't make any difference

So, how did I invest my thirty minutes with this game: Heart of Darkness?

Ten minutes were immediately wasted watching the fully rendered introduction sequence. And to be fair, now looking back on those ten minutes, it was the best the ten minutes of the entire thirty minutes I spent. If you like Flight of the Navigator, if you enjoyed films like E.T., and Wargames from the 1980s you going to like the introduction to Heart of Darkness. Sure, it drags on, but it captures the spirit of these 1980s kids adventures quite nicely, and I say lap-it-up because it's as good as gets from this game.

The next ten minutes was screaming and yawping and swearing at the TV. Why? Heart Darkness, during it's development cycle, re-animated the nefarious instant-death goblin that gaming hadn't seen since the last copy of Super Mario World on the NES was played. And god, how I hate that goblin.

Before I go any further, Heart of Darkness is a platformer, a platformer spread on two CDs. Yes, two. Now, don't get me wrong, I like a platformer game, and I'm not so Playstation blinded that I won't play a nice 2D platformer. In fact, the 32bit games consoles and above, have created some truly fantastic looking 2D platformers, so I was pretty keen on a platformer that was spread across one-thousand-two-hundred mega-bytes. That's a staggering amount of storage space for a 2D platfomer. So, honestly, I was, on the quiet, pretty excited.

My excitement was heightened by the fact that Eric Chahi of Another World (Out of this World to Americans) fame was involved in the development. I rate Another World as one of the most beautiful games ever, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

So, to recap, we have Eric, two CD's and an orchestral score. This is likely to be awesome. Isn't it? It is? Right?

However, pausing now, as I do, to reflect on that, I should have seen what was coming next, but blinded by wide-eyed hope, I did not.

What did I not see? I didn't see the two CD's being crammed with pre-rendered full motion video. Perhaps I should have done. Perhaps, after years of studying the 3DO, I should have suspected that the one and only way to justify two CDs for a platform-game is the most liberal use of full-motion-video ever. And of cause an orchestral music score uses up a few bytes.

What I should have perhaps also seen is the Insta-death.(tm) By the end of the first few screens of Heart of Darkness I had been eaten, crushed and plunged to my death. And I was mad. Through no fault of my own. Through no mistake of not reading the signs. You know what? I'm a gamer, this is my world. If something twinkles, do I not pick it up? If something rumbles, do I not step back should it collapse? If an enemy shadow goblin comes running at me, do I not whack away at the X-button to try and kill it. I do. I'm a gamer. It's instinctive.

Yet Heart of Darkness does not play by these rules. It plays by it's own rules. Invisable and unseen.

Rule 1 of H-of-D: This is quite a short game, so delay the player by killing them very very frequently, they will think it's longer and therefore better value.

Rule 2 of H-of-D: Buy stock and shares in joystick manufacturers as “Rule 1” is likely to drive all gamers insane.

So what do I know? I know that the shadow-creature things can come at three levels: Low, medium and high. I know the big and the extra big monsters can eat me. I know that every so often the game will just kill me because, so it seems, it hates me. And I know there is no way to cross that narrow bridge without plunging to my death. And that's where I gave up.

Now, the thing is, if I had bought this ten years ago for around forty pounds, there is every chance I would have stuck at it, but I only paid a few pounds and therefore I don't care. So, that said, ten minutes into actually playing the game. I finally got the arse, and gave up, but not entirely. What I did then was set the game to 'Easy' and played it for another ten minutes. Sadly, it didn't help.

If you have the patience of the Biblical Job, then hey, you're going to enjoy this. If you enjoy Full Motion Video, and you enjoy the idea of Eric Chahi ever-so slightly rehashing the story line from Another World, then knock-yourself-out, I on the other hand, have my sock draw to re-organise!

3DOKid.

Comments

Deathtrap Dungeon

2008-10-19T15:38:48+02:00

Okay, so, this blog is beginning to read like something Sony would write. I appreciate your concern, I really do, the problem is that all the games I have covered so far have been pretty good. I also appreciate I sound like a sad middle-aged twat fanboy trying to convince the world Playstation is okay.

Maybe I am?

Nahhh.

The other thing is I cannot abide the pretentious tossers who endlessly bang on about SHMUPS. Ironically, that's exactly what I have done too...

So, I better cover some crappy games, to cover my back.

A good place to start: Deathtrap Dungeon. What they should have done, if they had been honest, is call it Cash-Trap dungeon. Why? Because a few things didn't add up from the get-go.

Ian Livingston? Check!
Deathtrap Dungeon? Check!
Ian Livingston of Fighting Fantasy fame? Check!

Enter brain-left a flurry of memories of quite possibly the greatest books ever written ever. Fighting Fantasy books. You read a bit, threw a dice and then went to another section or page of the book, read it bit more and so on it went.

It was, for a dyed in the wool geek like me, the best thing to come out of the eighties. Except for Kim Wilde – obviously.

Now, the first clue that Deathtrap dungeon on the Playstation was going to be a memory abuse case of catholic church proportions, was the cover art. As I recalled things, the cover art to the book Deathtrap dungeon was so hideous, I, as a nice, pleasant, well brought up fourteen year old, could barely bring myself to look at it. It was a picture of evil itself. Just a look, a mere glance at the cover of Deathtrap Dungeon, I was convinced, was a glimpse at a beast of hell itself. It was that good.

Go on. Google it. Google for “Deathrap Dungeon” and then look at images. If you can see a demonic blob of festering beast matter straight from the anus of hell, you found it, if you're looking at a pathetic black box with Deathtrap Dungeon written on it, in yellow whiplash font, then you're looking at the blasphemous PS1 box art.

So, okay, I flip the box over. There is a woman, dressed in leather attire, with enormous thingies, you know, women thingies, and she is wearing thigh-high leather boots and carrying a massive sword.

So, enter brain right afore mentioned woman. I don't remember her from the book. I was fourteen, I could amuse myself eight times a day when I was fourteen, so why don't I remember this woman? She's just the sort of woman... Oh yes. That's it. SHE WASN'T IN THE BOOK.

Atlus and Eidos between them have changed the art, which wasn't necessary, and changed the characters. That somehow, despite the allure of the new character, also wasn't necessary.

But, I'm getting worked up over mere trifles. Mere cosmetic differences. Surely, with Ian Livingstons name so brashly brandished across the cover how bad could it be?

Hmmm. How bad could it be, seems to have the standard by which they made the game. I am, honestly, the most forgiving gamer on earth. I played Driver 3, to conclusion, and I enjoyed it. I like and still enjoy playing Starblade. I own a 3DO. I found 50 games to be considered the top 50 games for that system. When I say I'm forgiving, I make Jesus look uptight and rash when it comes to forgiving people. Well, games. Well, Jesus never reviewed games. Obviously. But if he had done, I could teach him a thing or two about forgiving bad games.

So the point of that is: Deathtrap Dungeon is bad. It's awful. It's dreadful. When people whine on about draw distance, poor camera angles, bad graphics. They have no room to speak, unless they are talking about Deathtrap Dungeon. The controls, the sound effects, it's just bad-bad-bad.

The other thing, despite the Deathtrap, despite the dungeon, despite the half naked woman, it's boring. Really boring.

So there you go.

3DOKid.

Comments

Einhander

2008-10-17T05:15:57+02:00

Another SHMUP. That's a Shoot'em up. I'll say it again, because no-one reads this blog anyway; a Shoot 'em up is what the original space invaders was. A little triangle shaped thing moving left to right at the bottom of the screen, and some slobbering fool stood in front of the arcade machine, mashing away at a single red button like his life depended on it. That was circa 1978, since that time not a lot has changed. A few more colours, the little triangle thing moves top to bottom, and indeed left-to-right but ultimately it's not all that different.

I mean, if it was my mum I was explaining things too, I doubt she would see any difference what so ever. She would probably moan about the music in Einhänder mind you. The music is good.

Einhander, which means one handed in German, is nothing less than awesome. I admit, I have a habit of over selling, but with this one, you have to trust me: It's brilliant.

As is normally the case I had a good look around the web to make sure everyone disagrees with me and I was sorely disappointed, most people think this is pretty good too.

Shoot 'em ups are merely memory tests and reflex tests, does it really need a plot? Maybe a setting? Maybe? Reservations about the need for a plot aside, I did kind of like it. Earth verses Moon, end-of-the-world, blah, blah, blah. It is, in fairness, an epic cheesey-ness plot but it fits the game, it fits the mood, and it fits the graphics, so who cares?

The best thing about Einhander is that it comes with a "buzz". You blast your way through each level, pulverizing the Playstations X and O key, then just when you can't pulverize any more, the end-level boss appears demanding almost god like pulverizing. It's good stuff. It's engrossing and it doesn't cheat, far from it actually, it's hard, but it let's you think you can win.

It's one of those games where you are sort of faced with an end-of-level boss, and initially it's hardest thing in the world. It almost seems impossible to get past it. Then something clicks in your mind, and eventually you get past it, and for whatever reason, the next time you play you breeze past it again, with almost no effort. I like this. I don't know whether it's intentional or merely the way the human brain works, or just me, however, it's very rewarding. Each time you play Einhander you progress a little further, and that, in my book (or blog) is good.

The sense of exploration and the desire to see the next bit is driven not only by the game play, which I hope you understand is very addictive, but also by the beautiful graphics. A few of the bosses are really impressive, as are the 2.5D maneuvers the the graphics make from time-to-time, sweeping to a different aspects as your craft enters or leaves an area but the real gob-smackers are the levels themselves. Whether it's flying through a city, or chasing a train, or zooming just off of the surface of an underground lake, Square Soft have really gone to town on the imagery. It is awesome.

Some idiot magazine believed you could finish this game in an hour. Yeah. Right? No. No you can't. Not a hope in hell but then, obviously, they, the game mags, usually hand the responsibility of reviewing SHMUPS to the resident SHMUP expert, who no doubt spends considerable time in SHMUP world flopping his 'joystick' about, professing to all in sundry he can 1CC everything. I, being a mortal, have yet to finish Einhander after several hours of deliberate play.

Someone will bitch if I don't mention the mechanics. There are lots of guns. Lots of gun layouts. Each gun has a pro and con depending on whether it was install over or underhand on your spaceship. Yeah - guns.

The only thing letting Einhander down is it's second hand value which comparative to a lot of Playstation games is bloomin' expensive, and is only available in US and Japanese flavours. Fortunately, Sony, bless 'em, have put Einhander on PSN. In America. Ironic, when much of the games spoken word is in German. Which for those of you living in the US and Japan, is in Europe. You remember Europe? The place where the good quality cheese comes from!

3DOKid

Comments

Sanvein

2008-10-10T22:06:34+02:00

Games as art? Yeah - why not? Pictures are art. Well, art is art. Confused? Yeah - me too now. Moving on; music is art. Moving pictures are art. So, why shouldn't a combination of them all be art. To an extent, that's true. So, okay, right. Where was I going with that?

Oh-yeah. I remember: Sanvein. A game, supprise-supprise, for the Playstation.

It's a sort of a 3D shooter. Well, for all intent and purpose it could have been and actually is 2D, just the graphics are 3D with an isometric view. Each level is broken into rooms. You clear rooms by shooting everything in them, and then every so often there is a boss. Got it? You won't have because it's more complex than that.

Okay - try to keep up. Essentially, the game is a balancing act. The clock counts down. When it hits zero - it is game over. It counts down even when you are selecting a room to fight in. You have to trade-off how quickly you can clear a room against how much time you have left, plus the number of linked rooms determines the power of your weapons. Which obviously effects how quickly you can clear a room. See what it does? Clever eh? Kind of. You also have to take into consideration that if you get shot, you lose great-big blocks of time.

The game construct is pretty clever, and I like it. It's not the standard SHMUP, it's something a bit different, and for that reason, amongst others, I like it.

It's let down though. Let down, in my opinion, by sloppy implementation of the battles and also the on screen action can be a bit busy too. Add to that the controls feel a bit woolly. All-in-all, you as the player don't always feel in control of the craft. Also, the question of 'does it really matter if I am in control of the craft?' hangs over the player.

It just needed tightening up a bit. It's not bad. It's just not great.

...but it is alluring.

For starters it couldn't be more Japanese if it came with free Sushi, bowed every-time you put the disc in the PS1, and slept on it's very own futon. So, in a way, the game is kind of beautiful, well to me at least. It looks like a Japanese SHMUP makers vision of the future. A vision of games from the past. If that makes sense. I obviously appreciate it doesn't.

From the thumping techno sound track, to the "You have the privilege to continue this battle..." title screen motto, to the NASA-Huston style sound samples, to the glitzy over the top graphics, the look and feel of Savien hit a nerve with me. It's very attractive. I like it.

Playing it, is, if I'm honest, can be something of a chore. The game doesn't feel like it's kicking in until you are nearly dead. So each game starts of way too easy for too long, then gets way too difficult too quickly. Which is a recipe for frustration.

That said, I could watch and listen to it all day. Including the obligatory pre-rendered introduction.

This game is far from rare, but it's under-valued. It is, I hope you appreciate from what I said, not a bad game. It's pretty good. It's simply not great but for the £2.50 from eBay it's going to cost you, it's worth it for the spectacle alone. Honestly.

3DOKid.

Comments

SNK - Koudelka

2008-10-03T06:20:46+02:00

So? What's wrong with this? It's like an RPG version of Resident Evil and it's not bad. It is set in Wales, which is good, although naturally the entire populace of Aberystwyth doesn't speak, as you might expect, with a Welsh accent, no indeed, they speak with American accents -- but we British are used to this.

The game has you wandering around this Welsh monastery, like it is Resident Evil and you fight monsters like they are in Final Fantasy 9. Plus you have to power-up your stats like it's Final Fantasy.

The characters seem alright. The lead female is a typical short skirted, long legged, suspender wearing kick ass, not unlike Milla Jovovich in Resident Evil movie. This is very good. The lead male is pretty none decrepit American but the priest is fun, he's a nice and zealous bible-bashing type and all told I liked the scripting and the story. SNK did a much better job than Capcom ever did of this.

Straight away I'm going to say I liked this - but I seem to be in a minority of one. A quick cruise around the Interweb and, well, I don't know, the "6 out of 10s" this game gets seems a little harsh.

Sure the list of what appear to be common criticisms are indeed valid. First off, it's random battle-tastic. Not, I hasten to add, as random battle-tastic as a 'proper' Japanese RPGs but there is a fair amount of it. It doesn't bother me, but a lot of you I know get your panties all knotted up over it.

Next the weapon system. You have to find your weapons, and eventually they break. It's true. Having read a few comments out-there, you might think this is a crime of Charles Manson proportions, but honestly? It's not. I mean, Koudelka, the lead strumpet, has been knocking seven-shades of crap out of enemies all night with the same pipe. It's still working fine. Edward admittedly has gone through the gun and a sword, but honestly, it didn't make me break down in tears. 'Tis not that bad. I swear.

The good bits, the bits the belly-achers on the web forget to mention? Firstly, is the atmosphere. Which is fitting. It's creepy, it's 1800's and it's tastefully done. Did they capture the atmosphere of 12th Century Welsh monastery? Yes. Well as best they could with 32,000 colours and 2Mb of RAM. Secondly the graphics. As good as RE2 easily. The beasties you fight are very impressive. At one stage early on you stumble across a Mummyfied Mummy in a wedding dress, while you are trying to knock her out with a two-handed axe, you can't help but be impressed by the 3D animated cockroaches that act as her support. It is very good.

...the one web moan about this game is the music. It is indeed rubbish, but seriously, is it "a disaster"? No. It's not great; True. But it's not a disaster. Honest.

If I'm truthful the first twenty minutes of the game were indeed irritating. The controls aren't Resident Evil like, and you spend a while wrestling with them, but then unlike the vocal minority of the Internet, I enjoy the benefits of a frontal cortex and opposable thumbs: Good grief - I adapted! Give it go! You might too! Hurrah!

Finding doors and exits is something of a chore initially too, until you get your eye-in so to speak and everything seems a little confusing. I also played it initially on a PS3 which did a great a job of smoothing the jaggies in Koudelka thighs, but the PS3 seems to make it all a bit dark, and finding my way out of the second room had me on the brink of slamming the controller down and cursing the air. Switch off all the smoothing and unwidening the screen restoring the game to it's original Playstation glory and after that, things went swimmingly.

The game is spread over four Discs, god only knows why, as I rushed through discs one and two in a few hours, maybe the developers, SNK, felt more discs were reassuring to the one-disc-RPG equals no value of for money fraternity... that's not a criticism mind you, just a question.

All in all I think it's alright, and probably more deserving of an 8 out of 10 or higher but then scores out of ten are a load of rot anyway. If pressed to sum up Koudelka in a single world I'd say inventive. The story seems inventive, the plot, characters and monsters are inventive and the delivery is inventive.

Buy it - you can get it for under a fiver.

3DOKid

Comments

Namco - Galaxian 3

2008-09-22T19:55:04+02:00

I'm big fan of Namco. I like Tekken. I like Ace Combat and I like Ridge Racer. And in July 2006 I had this to say about Starblade http://fz1-3do.blog.co.uk/2006/07/23/starblade~982287

It's fair to say, I like Starblade. I like it a lot. So, imagine my fanboy delight when I learnt that the kind-of sequel to Starblade, namely Galaxian 3, was released on my beloved Playstation.

Now, in 1995 there was a fair amount of jabbering about 'bringing the arcade home'. Which was all well and good, but imagine bringing Galaxian 3 home. It was $150,000, and it was 16 feet square by about 8 feet high. That's pretty big, and pretty expensive, so if Namco was going to bring this behemoth home, some corners were going to be cut.

I know at this stage you'd like me to say that it's arcade perfect and was uprated to take advantage of the Playstation hardware, and it's an absolute joy to behold. However, in your heart-of-hearts you know full well that this was a sloppy port. And it was.

The game was originally projected onto a 120 inch screen using twin projectors, so obviously, the home conversion made no effort to ratify this for the small screen, they simply glued the two images together so badly you can see the join.

The high-resolution graphics, essentially the back drop, which was done so nicely on the original Starblade seems to have been put through an N64 blur-filter in Galaxian 3 on the Playstation. Meaning that the polygon based enemy craft look artificial, they aren't part of the same universe as the backdrops.

The magic, the magic that was in the ports of Starblade is gone in Galaxian 3. And it's gutting.

Let's face it, Galaxian and for that matter Starblade, is actually about a 3D journey and a wonderfully pre-rendered space battle, the game, the actual playing element, was at best pretty weak . The graphics in Starblade, for what they were, made the game. The graphics in Galaxian 3 on the Playstation, broke the game.

For some inexplicable reason, Namco seemed to believe that the game play of Galaxian 3 was so good, it didn't need sharp graphics. Namco was wrong. It did need. It needed very much. Galaxian 3 on the Playstation is just a pre-rendered onrails shooter, with horrible blurry graphics.

Galaxian 3 is almost identical to Starblade too. The obviously borrowed the Galaxian moniker to add some credibility to the game when in reality Galaxian 3 is basically Starblade version 1.5. In fact Galaxian 3 is a multiplayer, slightly younger version of Starblade, with altered grander, but crappier looking pre-rendered graphics.

The game takes around 10 minutes to complete, and takes almost exactly the same route as Starblade. You start in deep Space, fly through some asteroids, attack some big spaceships, descend on to the planet, shoot the bit in the middle of the planet and you are done. It's so close to Starwars you can almost hear Obi Wan mumbling in you ear.

What I supposed happened was that the original Starblade, which also came out on the Playstation, had quite a bit of money spent on it by Namco. I don't imagine it sold too well and Galaxian 3 was shovelled across as cheaply as possible to either re-coup the money they lost doing a good job on the Starblade port, or it was done for contractual reasons.

Either way, Galaxian 3 on the Playstation upset me.

3DOKid

Comments

Infogames - V-Rally

2008-09-21T20:17:16+02:00

Often when writing for a blog, you think to yourself where am I going to start? Where do I begin?Well, there was no sodding problem today – I knew precisely where I was going to start:

Edge Magazine, you gits, you oversold the graphics to this game and you owe me £45.00 you lying bastards.

You see, they had, Edge Magazine that is, in their so called video games rag, a preview of V-Rally for the Playstation. This preview suggested that Infogames had revolutionised graphics on the Playstation by writing directly to the Playstation hardware in assembler language. This had, so Edge Magazine continued, me, the big graphics-whore that I am hanging on every sentence, created graphics of a quality never seen before on Playstation. This was because everyone else developed games for the Playstation the girlie way: I.e. Using C++, and Infogames had used assembler and therefore they had squeezed out the true, awesome manly power of the Playstation.

I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it. Needless to say, I placed my pre-order.

As this turned out, it was a bit of pork-pie as they say in Camden Town. I.e. Not the sodding truth.

They may have, they may not have, developed the game in Playstation assembler but it didn't make any sodding difference because the game looked like every other car related game on the Playstation. Plausible at the time, blocky today.

...and breath.

Still – is V-Rally any good?

Fortunately – it is.

Now, I own a car, I've driven for many years, I don't drive terribly fast, but I know how a car feels when it moves and how it handles. And while real Rally cars are a world away from the 3DOkid auto parked outside, I have a persistent belief that my real car is infinitely closer to a real Rally car than anything ever presented in a driving/racing game. And in that fact, V-Rally is no exception.

I appreciate that real rally cars are light and twitchy. And they jump and leap about and the sports suspension and frame and chassis is designed to be like this. And to a degree V-rally presents this well. I do not believe however, you can twat into a tree at 70mph and drive away. So, it's not very realistic in that respect, although it is desperately trying to be so. V-Rally sits in that nether region of car games, where actually Gran Turismo squats like big fat monkey pooh, not all realistic but at the same time completely unrealistic.

Realism aside. It is fun. And that's a minor triumph in it's own rights. It's quite addictive. The cars handle well, unrealistic, but well and your left with the feeling, even after the first couple of laps, that you could go quicker. And once you're hooked – you're hooked. V-Rally is a time gobbler.

There are selection of cars that will make any fan Sega's Sega Rally twitch with plagiarised spasmosis but it makes no odds – all the cars feel the same.

In arcade mode you're against three opponents which is fun and challenging and not marred by either an unfair elastic band system or a cheating elastic band system. For those that don't know, the elastic band system helps keep the race close so you never get to far ahead to be boring or too far behind to be hopeless.

In championship mode it's against the clock.

V-Rally is good in what it does, because you never feel that the game is cheating you. If you fail to win, or set a best time, it's because of your failures as the player, not because the track is too hard or the weather puts you off or it's too dark. Having said that night mode is tense.

And talking of tracks, we move on to another none-truth. Track editor. Hmm? Where is it Edge Magazine? In the preview it mentions a track editor. Which in my copy, here in 2008, it's not there. Not that I care. Level editors leave me cold.

This game, I can recommend. It stands up. You can play it in 2008 and you won't feel like some retro loser playing a substandard game because either you're too cheap or too poor or too much of a prick to recognise newer games are indeed better.

V-Rally – I swear – is playable. And yes, it's better than Sega Rally 3 on 360/PS3.

Comments

Team 17 -- X2

2008-09-21T19:11:31+02:00

Right, so, another day, another game. And today, it's a SHUMP, or for the less pretentious: A shoot 'em up. For the truly dumb: a game a bit like Space Invaders. Well, actually, almost exactly like space invaders.

Ask on the Internet about shoot 'em ups you will get a variety of responses. Some will no doubt claim Mario64 was the best shoot 'em up, because some people are stupid enough to believe any old crap with a Nintendo badge is a sublime and genre defining game, and they will tell you that because we don't see Mario64 as a SHUMP, then we should change our perspective and the only games worth playing have waggle and a stupid sodding plumber in them. Nintendo games and fans make me puke. Can you tell yet?

Others will bore you stupid with something called a Sega Saturn, and wax lyrical about games that if in fact had been actually any good, then the Sega Saturn would have sold more units. It didn't. So obviously it wasn't. And so these people are wrong. These games also generally have unpronounceable Japanese titles and/or cost hundreds of pounds.

The next crowd of Internet users will tell you that, to be fair, you need a JAMMA board to really play the best SHUMPS. That to mortals is arcade console-board thing for the home. And to be fair this group isn't far off the mark. SHUMPS are only really ever fun when they are hooking you like Heroin and stealing money from you like an out-of-work Lehmans futures trader.

That said, the type of people who own a Jamma board are generally not allowed out after dark and are not allowed to journey further than 200 yards from their sole or main residence.

So who is right? Well me obviously. Crack out you trusty PS3, PS2 or PS1 and there are, believe or believe it not, a bunch of SHUMPS for the Playstation. And guess what? X2 by Team 17 is one of them. This game is in English. It plays on PAL consoles. And was made by the British. And to top it off cost me the princely sum of £2.99

For £2.99 you can't complain. Well you can. And I'm going to.

I guess now would be a good time to say that I don't like SHUMPS in the home. I liked Raiden at the arcade and that's about it. So X2 was off on a tricky start.

Nice things I can say?

Well it's pretty colourful. According to the box: 32,000 colours. You do have to worry about a game if the only nice thing that the marketing people could say about it was the use of colour. If you like blue so it seems. One would imagine that Team 17 marketing people had been used to the Amiga, which was capable of only 256 colours on screen, and positively got into a lather about 32,000 colours – I'm only guessing of cause.

And then the game features plenty of parallax scrolling. I like parallax scrolling. I feel it is essential for any two-dimensional game. But then I'm a geek.

The enemy bosses are big and colourful and the range of weapons available to collect seems nice and varied.

The sound track is very Techno but then lots of games in the 1990s used a Techno sound track so I'm not awarding a cigar for that.

Bad things I can say? Well, the one thing that stands out is it is bloody hard. It's not hard for a good reason. It's not hard in challenging way. It's hard in a: why-did-they-decide-to-do-that-way?

It's one of those SHUMPS where you can't see the enemy bullets. Which annoys me. After all the game uses 32,000 colours. That's 32,000. So you might think that the enemy bullets could have stood out a little more with 32,000 colours to choose from – but they don't. And they are small too. And so while you play your health whittles away, unbeknown to you, and then you die eventually, for apparently no good reason. Now, people who rattle on about 'rumble' feature in a controller being essential make me vomit – it isn't -- but it might have been in this case. Some sort of indicator you are dying would have been good. And yes, there is a health bar but then there are several health bars, and goodness knows which one refers to the actual health of your spaceship. Probably in the manual right?

The enemies take up a lot of the screen sometimes, and they are very quick. Your ship isn't so quick and the game becomes a little frustrating.

Which sums up the game nicely: Frustrating.

Now, SHUMPS are basically memory test games. The baddies come to you in the same old pattern, they shoot at you in the same old pattern, and you kill them in the same old pattern. The joy, for those that like SHUMPS, is in the memorising. In that respect I'm quite sure that this game is awesome. If however like me, you struggle to remember what day it is and indeed, why you got up, then X2 might not be for you.

It's not rare, and like I said, not expensive, and if you want a British, none-pretentious, balls-to-the-wall arcade shooter, that doesn't have the words “R” and “Type” in the title, this maybe for you.

...but not me.

3DOKid.

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Club GTi coming to the PS3

2008-08-30T15:46:42+02:00

This was, as I recall, a pretty good arcade machine. You got to drive hot-hatches like the Mk1 Golf, Fiat Panda and of cause the Mini Cooper - the British Leyland one, not the tank sized BMW one, and a smattering of Italian supercars.

Club GTi was as close to taking part in the Italian Job without actually being Micheal Caine as was human possibly. And that includes the nasty Italian Job games that were also released.

It's called Club GTi plus, meaning it will be enhanced before it's stuck up on PSN.

Below is a German link, but even the most German langauge illeterate amongst you could probably make out that this is due for release in November and it's being coded by Sumo, the chaps who did Outrun 2006. (Incidently, the only Xbox game I didn't sling on eBay recently!)

http://www.consolewars.eu/news/21760/gc_konami_kuendigt_gti_club_an/

I'm quite looking forward to this, the only question I have, is how are they going to do the handbrake (a fairly central feature) with the Sixaxis?

(Please god, not with the Sixaxis motion sensor!)

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Rare Playstation titles winging there way to me.

2008-08-30T11:15:06+02:00

So, I flogged a load of DVD's, some Saturn games (whatever that is eh?) a bunch of Dreamcast games, a selection of Video Game Magazines, GameCube stuff, Xbox stuff, 360 stuff, it all went to eBay, meaning I have a couple of hundred pounds in PayPal to spend on Playstation stuff. [Rubs hands with glee]

I could blow the lot, I guess, on a PAL copy of Legends of Dragoon, or I figured, I could amass the worlds oddest collection of Playstation 1 curios.

So that's what I've started to do.

Heading to the 3DOkid towers as we speak:

- Elite Squad.
- Team 17 X2.
- Jersey Devil. (Not that odd, I agree.)
- Koudelka. (A game based in Wales, Anglesey of all places. I have high hopes for this one!)
- and many others.

I'm actually excited.

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PSP Cables

2008-08-30T08:14:11+02:00

I wanted to show you some games for the PSP. I wanted screen shots from my favourites: Wangan Midnight and Intial D. Yet, alas, it was not to be. I bought the wrong cable.

Don't let this happen to you. There are two cables for the PSP for connecting it to a TV.

One is an AV cable, which I have, which is completely useless appart from playing UMDs and music through it.

And the other is a Component Cable. That allows you to play games through the TV. This is the one I don't have.

Why? What's the point? GRRR!

[Sigh]

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Monster Rancher by Temco.

2008-08-28T22:20:59+02:00

My cute little FangGup. How I miss him. No, actually, he was hideous. He looked like a hairy single sperm. He was born on the game; Monster Rancher, when I impregnated my PS1 with a Star Wars audio CD. But he was my little FangGup.

That's right, Monster Rancher is a monster breeding game for the PS1, and the seed, so to speak, of each monster, is any CD you have lying around. In my case: Star Wars original sound track.

While I was hell bent on calling my monster something from Star Wars, or perhaps something religious, or should that be sacrilegious, it wasn't until I saw the little beastie, that I knew what I must call him: FangGup. As in a Guppy with Fangs.

I trained FangGup by forcing him to work down the mines, deliver mail, work at the circus and hunt. I've also sent him on specialist training courses, although they cost money as opposed to mail delivery, that earnt money, but none-the-less, no expense was spared on Training FangGup, the hairy sperm, to be a mindless killer.

I had him, (and it is a him, whose heard of female hairy sperm?) fed only the finest meat, and fish, and I've also pushed some vegetables down his throat, he didn't like them, but they are good for him.

I have also given him treats.

Between me and you, I loved FangGup. Although, I suspect, the love was unrequited.

Why?

Well, he was a lazy little swine. He only ever seems happy while asleep, and he always seemed somewhat put-out after I punished him for going to the field, when he should have been working cutting logs or something.

He also had to, I'm sorry to say, 'Battle'. It's bit like digital bear-bating or cock-fighting

Once every couple of months, after training, sleeping, eating and working, FangGup was forced to stand, quite feebly, in an arena facing down dinosaurs, dogs and sodding-enormous rockmen and host of other, much bigger, hairy sperm.

He wasn't a bad little fighter mind you.

He aced his first entry to the amphitheatre. Undefeated he rose immediately to first rung on the ladder marked "Rank E". No hairy sperm had done so much beating, with so little to beat with.

I rewarded him with treats, and endless rests in the field he loved so much.

...but the second battle day came and went, and FangGups success wasn't so great.

He was pummelled, quite, quite unfairly, by this giant Rockman.

The other mistake I made, was that unlike previous battles, I decided he should decide what action to take himself. This was to prove fatal.

He started well against the enormous Rockman. FangGup teleported himself across the floor, and tw*ted rockman with all his might before the giant concrete oaf could see what had happened. But perhaps a combination of too much meat, not enough mail delivery and too much lying around in the field, FangGup only managed 1 damage point. Rockman had a total of around 200 points, and FangGup had just wasted 75% of all his spermy energy teleporting across the screen and tail whipping the meat-head.

Rockman swaggered across the room (I swear he was drunk) and bashed FangGup square in the face. FangGups hit points went from an initially feeble 120/120HP, to a terrifying-close-to-death 3/120 hit points in just one hit.

The defeat was brutal. It was, as the words 'Lose' splashed across FangUps face, then, that I decided FangGup was for the cryogenic freezing chamber, a new monster, more Rockman-like, less spermy, was to be the way to win at Monster Rancher, I was sure.

I've never played a video game like this before - and I like it!

PSXKid.

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Resistance Fall of Man 2.

2008-08-28T20:52:01+02:00

I liked the original. I did. Well - maybe I did. It's difficult to tell often whether you like a launch title or not because often your opinions can be tainted by the fact, in this case, you paid the best part £600 for it. Mind you it came with a free console, but still.

I did like it I'm sure. I like games with real guns, I'm not a big fan of games with only plasma lump-o shots, but Resistance, lik my favourite FPS, Black, had a nice meaty machine gun as I recall.

Anyway, that's all irrelevent. As a loyal Sony fanboy, I noticed Eurogamer have a exclusive video of Resistance Fall of Man 2: http://www.eurogamer.net/tv_video.php?playlist_id=13101

PSXKid.

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Nightmare Creatures

2008-08-28T06:56:38+02:00

I paid the princely sum of £2.99 for this game (Nightmare Creatures) and besides the weird sort of leaping motion of the main character, tw*ting the monsters with a big stick is kind of fun.

...but it seems universally panned? It's not that bad - surely?

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Retro back to the modern Playstation ...or something.

2008-08-24T16:35:13+02:00

If you have any Playstation 3, you can play any Playstation 1 game. If you have a Playstation 2, you can play any Playstation 1 game. If you have a PSP, and access to magic, and smoke, and mirrors, you can play any Playstation 1 game.

So, you can't lose buying Playstation 1 games so it seems, but what is worth playing? Ask on the Internet forums and you'll be bombarded with obscure Japanese 2D RPGs, or endless people telling you to play Ridge Racer Type 4. Like you didn't know that already right?

The question you've got is, outside of the obscure and the obvious, what's good?

Let PSXKid steer you straight!

1. Gallerians.

It's a bit like Resident Evil in the controls, visuals and game-play department. The game has you play the role of Rion, a kid with psychic abilities, and your quest is for the truth. Where do I come from? What is my purpose? What am I doing? You know the drill. Essentially, you march around solving problems, finding keys, and setting fire to people with the power of your mind. It's not totally without imagination, you have to keep Rion strung out on painkillers, or he loses control of his mind and arbitrarily wipes out everything he meets, useful, to a point, but he loses health-points the entire time.

If you've wondered what it might be like, making people spontaneously combust, this is the game for you. If you didn't like Resident EVil, you may want to avoid it.

2. Colony Wars - Red Sun.

The original Colony Wars by Psygnosis was good, but hard. Colony Wars 2: Vengeance, was too faffy, and fiddly. So, by the time Colony Wars 3: Red Sun came out, nobody gave a monkeys. Which is shame, because it's the best of the series.

The story is alright, standard sort of Scifi affair. It's different from the original heroic tale against impossible odds, but it's okay, more sophisticated than it's predecessor.

The graphics are awesome, both the in-game graphics, and the pre-rendered sequences, both really shows the power of the PS1. And it's much easier. Also, the ship handles well, the choice of weapons is good, and it's a good, solid playable today game.

3. Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.

Ace Combat has been on a journey. A lot of people will have played the original on the PS1 and been turned-off to the series. Perhaps not turned off, but the thoughts of a sequel didn't really set the world on fire. Then, when Ace Combat 4 emerged on the PS2, and turned out to be awesome, people have been, to a point, anticipating Ace Combat games again. But, did you see what happened? You missed Ace Combat 3. Sadly in the U.K. we don't get the proper version, with all the missions and the story, but you can see the evolution from Air Combat to Ace Combat 4. Ace Combat 3 is very good, and worth tracking down. It's also technically impressive.

4. Rayman.

I liked Grim Grimoire on the PS2. I liked Odin Sphere on the PS2. I liked La Purcelle on the PS2. Rayman, despite being a PS1 title, and a platformer, it can almost hold it's head up in this group of games. It looks great, and plays great. You can download it on PSN for a couple of quid, or you can buy a boxed original on eBay for a quid. Well, worth the effort.

5. Carnage Heart.

A weird, weird game. Essentially, you build robots and use them to fight battles. The graphics stink. They really do, but the ability to 'program' the Artificial Intelligence in your little robots (they call them OKE's) is addictive, and very rewarding. This game is hard. It's not the actual game that is hard, it's the learning curve. And the manual is fiddly, and the interface is ropey. Can I recommend it? Yes. Because despite the failings, it's actually pretty good, and hugely addictive. It's pretty rare - but never pricey.

Comments

PS games people love because they are in vogue.

2008-08-24T16:00:43+02:00

The games industry, as any long time observer will have spotted, goes through peaks, troughs and fads. Pong and Centipede turned into text-adventures, which in turn gave way to platformers, then we had 3D, then RPGs, then realism, in all it's guises, and now we face the most odious fad: Casual, family and puzzle games.

[sigh]

I'm a man. It's true. I like violence (in games), I like women, I like cars, I like aeroplanes, I like really big explosions, I like boobage, I'm not ashamed, I do. I like testing my spacial awareness, my reflexes and my (hard to see) mental prowess.

You see, I thought, I honestly did, when I smacked the prostitute over the head with the crow-bar in Grand Theft Auto to get my money back -- I thought it was funny. It was. It's still funny.

And you know what? I'm not alone. Be honest. I'm not. So, what dark lord has made the Wii, and it's happy-smiley fields of overtly-cheerful-gayness-games so damn popular? Grown men, waxing-lyrical about, about what? Super Mario Galaxies? You can climb on a giant space bee -- "It's just Sublime".

Yeeeesss.

Okay.

Great.

Is it global warming? If I convert my 3.2L car to run on biodegradable fuels, and worry about my carbon-foot print, earn my green-Blue Peter badge, and stuff all my rotting egg shells, if I had any, in plastic bucket outside my front door, will these Nancie's leave me alone? Could the gaming world somehow go back to hoping some mild nudity will turn-up?

...but it's just a phase the games industry is going through. We know that. We know what the game makers will do. They will make a million casual games, run themselves into financial ruin, trying to sell Smego-the-brain-training-jello. And when they don't sell? Well, then they come back to us middle-core gamers, offering us games with naked women, guns and fast cars. And we'll buy them. Because, you know, no matter what, as you grow and change as man, violence, autos and boobs never, ever, lose their appeal.

Right now, in the anti-testosterone stakes, Nintendo are the worst offenders, and reading between the lines with Miyamoto, I can see why. Microsoft? Well, they only have FPS's, but Sony? ...no not even Sony are saints.

Sonys Top 5 women/family/casual gamer panderings.

1. [PSP]Loco Roco. You can move bits of yellow 2D jelly around. Nice. Sure. Yeah. It's a great game. Sure it is. Great. Maybe it was popular in mental wards, calming the uber-nutters before bedtime? Not in this house. We like our uber-nutters restless here.

2. [PSP]ME MY KATAMARI. Wuh-hoo-eee. Sun Flower continent? Saving the Red Pander stage? Does the pander look anything like Catherine Zeta Jones, in a bikini and all oiled up? No? Okay - I'll pass.

3. [PS1]PaRappa the Rapper. Arguably the grandfather of recent casual-plague. And no. No thank you.

4. [PSN] Flow. It is isn't it? It's tree hugging hippy crap. It is.

5. [PS2/PS3] Eyetoy. You can pretend to interact with the console and wash windows. Great. Better still, why don't you go outside with a bucket of water and wash windows? And if you're Miss Jones, do it in a bikini.

PSXkid.

Comments

Games for the PSP worth a punt.

2008-08-24T14:14:56+02:00

Ah, the much lamented Playstation Portable. It is, quite possibly, one of the best hand-held consoles ever made. Well, it is for me. I admire Nintendo, I admire what they have done with the DS and the Gameboy consoles, but the games don't float my boat. They're a bit too, I don't know, cheerful? Anyway, the PSP, here is four games on the PSP worth, at the very least, tracking down on eBay.

1. Ace Combat X. Skies of deception.

I've been playing the Xbox 360 Ace Combat 6, which is brilliant. However, it's inching towards realism and further from the original Playstation title. That said, the PSPs version of Ace Combat is a homage to the original. It's awesome. For my money, it's more like the arcade than any of the PS2 versions, and certainly the 360 version. The replays are better. The plane customisation options are better. The cheesy lines are better. ...and it looks fantastic. Buy it now!

2. Killzone liberations.

The PS2 version of Killzone was something of an anti-climax, and thanks to this, Killzone Liberations on the PSP is often ignored. Adopting the sins of it's father so to speak. Yet, it is quite a different game and very enjoyable, and like all PSP media, can be picked up for trifling amounts of cash, and it is brilliant. I kid you not.

3. Ridge Racer

Ridge Racer on the PSP was the turning point of the series for me. As a fan of the original, I could see over time the Ridge Racer series was merrily losing it's way, the makers, Namco, kept playing around with realism, each time moving further-and-further away from the original Ridge Racer. The Ridge we all knew and loved. Especially me. This path to ultimate driftless-destruction with added realism culminated in R:Racing. Some hideous, powerslide-less racing game, from the Ridge Racer stable.

Then came Burnout. Burnout, as far as I am concerned, is like loosely guiding a cruise missile down some tarmac. I am controlling the game ... just. Burnout lacks finesse, style and real joy to be honest...

Anyway, at some point Namco seems to have realised that there was a market for arcade racers, tossed their realism plans in the bin, and bought us the greatest version of Ridge Racer ever. Better than the 360 RR6, better than PS3s RR7.

...and contains Reiko Nagase before she got those gappy front teeth.

4. God of War.

I like God of War. Mindless violence ...hmm.

I like my violence bloody, and my women semi-naked. God of War was written for me and my ilk. Great streaming chains of death? "Yes please" I say. In some ways GoW is like Ridge Racer. It's fairy crude, you just sort of wander through the levels repeating yourself time-after-time, but instead of setting faster lap times, you are killing ever increasingly large greek mythological beasts ...that said, there is an elegance. And getting that mindless hacking-and-slashing just right is very reqarding. If you liked God of War on the PS2, you'll like this.

Comments

Resident Evil

2008-08-24T11:22:48+02:00

Resident Evil for the PS1.

Woah! This brings back memories. I remember reading about a game called 'Biohazard' in the official U.K. Playstation magazine in '96, and at the time I just wanted it. There is, every possibility, that I just wanted because of the graphics mind you. I haven't, as this blog progresses you will learn, changed an awful lot.

The game is set in 1998. Two years after the game was released. Now, ten years ago.

So, let me set the scene. There I sat. In the PSXKid grand reception room, on my Winchester leather sofa, with my dark oak furniture. In the dark. Clutching my PS controller. Staring wide-eyed at the TV. I'm a thirty-something year old man now. Not a twenty-something wimp. So, why does this game with it's aging graphics still scare me?

The sound effects? Quite possibly. Sat there with my controller, craning my neck, trying to decide if that groan came from the zombie I just put three shots into? Or was it four? Or another zombie just out of view? It's scary. It is. The first time one of those flesh-peeling freaks grabbed my ankles and munched-down on it, for the very first-time in over 10 years, I squeaked. As my father says: “Are you a man or a mouse” the answer father, is in the squeak.

In addition to the zombies there are the dogs. Oh man the dogs. I was, almost, ready for the dogs this time. Leaping through the windows, it didn't scare me this time. No this time it sent me into a panic. I am embarrassed to say how long I sat in silence, trying to make sure I couldn't still hear one of the blood drenched Dobermans padding about.

I don't care what they say: Resident Evil is good. Hard? Yes. I turned up at the mansion. And yes, I was dead in three minutes. Immediately after my first zombie encounter. I tried stabbing it. I did. I stabbed it in the head, the guts and the nuts. It still didn't go down. It grabbed me and as blood splurged from my avatars throat, you know? It felt good to back.

That said, if Resident Evil was released today, like this, people would bitch, I have no doubt, about the difficulty.

But then, if you go onto the Internet, there are plenty of Resident Evil neigh-sayers. Accusations squared directly at Resident Evil that would have you believe it is, in someway bad. Straight-off the cuff it's not but we'll address these accusations any way.

Firstly the controls. I'll be honest it never ceases to amaze me, quite how far gamers are from the rest of the human race in some cases. Most humans adapt pretty quickly. Either to compensate for a disability or a to a difficulty. And they do it quickly. So, while the Resident Evil controls are not immediately easy, they are by no means a reason not to play the game. And eventually, through the mighty power of neural-strands forming links, they become second nature. Quite frankly, the type of people who bitch on about controllers and controls need to find a new hobby.

Secondly: People might say, the graphics haven't aged well. It's weird. In my minds eye, the mansion in Resident Evil is a classic old country mansion. It's sharp, clear and elegant. In 2008, going back to it, if I'm honest, it isn't. However, it draws you in. It like hypnotizes you. And it draws you in well. And after a while of playing it, the Resident Evil mansion is sharp and clear and elegant. Even now, I sit here and type, that's how I imagine it. Even though I now it's blurry mess in some places.

Thirdly: Camera angles. There is not an insubstantial amount of belly-aching about the camera-angles. “Oooh, I can't see the zombies.” “Gripe – I can't target the gun” “Whine, I haven't completed puberty yet” -- that sort of thing.

It is, of cause, all rubbish. The camera angles didn't bother me one iota. Thing is, Resident Evil is desperately trying to add a cinematic quality to the camera angles. It's patently obvious when you play it again, with older-wiser eyes. It's not as if the developers, (Capcom in case you wondered) purposefully went out of there way to make it difficult. They justed wanted it to look like a movie. And it does. To a degree.

On that note, I played it on my Playstation 3, and the PS3 merrily smoothed the graphics, and gave the whole game a sort of artistic feel. I didn't really like it, so I switched it off, but you might like it.

The final accusation pointed at Resident Evil by those miserable sods on the Internet, is that of plagiarism. And to a point, they are right. The obvious donor game was Alone in the Dark. Add to that a little injection of Dr Hauzer from the 3DO. And a big dollop of “Sweet Home” from the NES. More than a dollop actually. A smidge of D's Diner. Leave it on gas-mark Romero for three years and indeed, out pops Resident Evil.

...but it's not as easy as that. It's like criticizing the Porsche 911, because obviously there were cars made before it, and it's just a bit of a rip-off of those. Isn't it? Well, no.

It's not is it? Let's be honest. It's about quality. And Resident Evil is a high quality version of what came before it.

If I'm savagely honest, Alone and Hauzer are kind of clunky, and little slow. Now, don't get me wrong, I love Alone in the Dark. I rate it as one of my favorite all time games. As I do Dr Hauzer. Hell, I rewrote the FAQ for Hauzer, and I really do love it. Hauzer and Alone have, in my opinion, a certain elegance and beauty. However, this should not detract from the fact that Resident Evil is a better game.

The mansion in Resident Evil is bigger than any that came before it. (I reckon.) The zombies, the dogs, the creatures, the action, are way in advance of the survival-horror that preceded it. The integration of theme, sound and graphics make Resident Evil feel more solid, more refined, simply better. Capcom applied a triple-wax polish to Resident Evil, so even today, after more than a decade, it's a damn fine game.

It's vogue, on high-brow internet forums, to suggest Resident Evil 2 is the better game. Until Resident Evil 4 that is but in retrospect, the original was the one that changed the world, and for good reason.

So there you go. Resident Evil has been out on the Playstation store for the PS3 in Japan for ages, so I have a feeling it will be available for download in Europe and America before long. You can, of cause, pick up a copy of Resident Evil on eBay for a few pounds.

I promise it is worth the effort!

Take good care of yourselves!

PSXKid.

Comments