jtduckman
1991
So I just got a CD-i today. I've been looking for one for YEARS, and while the systems legacy today lies within the infamous licensed Nintendo titles, those weren't the reason why I was looking so hard. It was the stranger, more obscure titles in the library that hooked me in. Like this game right here: Connect Four. When I was alphabetically scrolling through the CD-i library back in the day and I saw this, I was so simultaneously confused and intrigued. Were people in 1991 really spending full-ass game money on a game for a system that uses the latest-and-greatest optical media technology just to play ONE extremely simple board game?
On one hand, I get it. The CD-i was supposed to be more than just a game console catering to hardcore gaming gamers, and rather be an all-in-one media box that can handle your disc-based music, photos, and movies (provided you have the expansion cart to do so), with the games being an extra side bonus. It makes sense for a more casual, relatable game like connect four to be a standalone release on the console to attract them non-gamers to the world of interactive media. But at the same time, I feel like Connect Four being a standalone title makes sense more on something like the atari 2600. But I guess considering that system was also targeting the same crowd of non-gamers (seeing as in that time, there weren't any "core gamers") it all comes around full circle.
As for the game itself: it is precisely what it says on the box. There are a few vibin early-90s FMV intros, a smooth-voiced narrator that explains the controls, you pick one out of eight(!) colors to use, and you play against either the computer or another person in that game you see in every doctors office waiting room. No extra skins, no music, just connect four in the grey CD-i world. I don't have either a second controller nor a second player to do the 2 player, so I played against the CPU. I suck at connect four, even the easiest AI kept kicking my ass. Eventually I got a few games off of them, but the CD-i def got hands. There is an undo move button that you can use as much as you want, which means if you really want you can just spam it and TAS-twerk on the hardest difficulty CPU no problem, but I am a man of connect four bushido honor. Once you've had your fill of connecting four, selecting "no" to playing again not only plays the entire credits, but also kicks you back out to the CD-i boot menu. In one sense it's kinda raw that the game goes "okay, goodbye" and confidently exits itself when you've had enough, but also there were times where I accidentally hit no when I meant to hit yes and had to reboot the whole ass system. The credits even have a special thanks section of 4 people in it. I wonder what those people did to get themselves credited that way in this game... A true gaming mystery of all time.
It's a very nothing game but like what the hell do you expect from connect four. Can't say I can really recommend it in any capacity due to the hassle that is (and I assume even for its time, was) getting the ability to play CD-i games. If you really want to play Connect four, play the real ass board game, it's probably at your local goodwill if you don't have it. There are probably WEBSITES that offer more featured connect four than this in our current modern age. But on a personal sense I'm extremely glad I have a CD-i now so I can satiate that years-long curiosity I have had for games like this. I'm not even joking, I was more hyped to play this than I have been for ANY PS5 game. I hope to review more CD-i games (including those four titles, despite how beaten those dead horses are), but knowing my backlog things will prob be sporadic. I paid 300 dollars to play mfin connect four. Sometimes even I question my taste in games.
On one hand, I get it. The CD-i was supposed to be more than just a game console catering to hardcore gaming gamers, and rather be an all-in-one media box that can handle your disc-based music, photos, and movies (provided you have the expansion cart to do so), with the games being an extra side bonus. It makes sense for a more casual, relatable game like connect four to be a standalone release on the console to attract them non-gamers to the world of interactive media. But at the same time, I feel like Connect Four being a standalone title makes sense more on something like the atari 2600. But I guess considering that system was also targeting the same crowd of non-gamers (seeing as in that time, there weren't any "core gamers") it all comes around full circle.
As for the game itself: it is precisely what it says on the box. There are a few vibin early-90s FMV intros, a smooth-voiced narrator that explains the controls, you pick one out of eight(!) colors to use, and you play against either the computer or another person in that game you see in every doctors office waiting room. No extra skins, no music, just connect four in the grey CD-i world. I don't have either a second controller nor a second player to do the 2 player, so I played against the CPU. I suck at connect four, even the easiest AI kept kicking my ass. Eventually I got a few games off of them, but the CD-i def got hands. There is an undo move button that you can use as much as you want, which means if you really want you can just spam it and TAS-twerk on the hardest difficulty CPU no problem, but I am a man of connect four bushido honor. Once you've had your fill of connecting four, selecting "no" to playing again not only plays the entire credits, but also kicks you back out to the CD-i boot menu. In one sense it's kinda raw that the game goes "okay, goodbye" and confidently exits itself when you've had enough, but also there were times where I accidentally hit no when I meant to hit yes and had to reboot the whole ass system. The credits even have a special thanks section of 4 people in it. I wonder what those people did to get themselves credited that way in this game... A true gaming mystery of all time.
It's a very nothing game but like what the hell do you expect from connect four. Can't say I can really recommend it in any capacity due to the hassle that is (and I assume even for its time, was) getting the ability to play CD-i games. If you really want to play Connect four, play the real ass board game, it's probably at your local goodwill if you don't have it. There are probably WEBSITES that offer more featured connect four than this in our current modern age. But on a personal sense I'm extremely glad I have a CD-i now so I can satiate that years-long curiosity I have had for games like this. I'm not even joking, I was more hyped to play this than I have been for ANY PS5 game. I hope to review more CD-i games (including those four titles, despite how beaten those dead horses are), but knowing my backlog things will prob be sporadic. I paid 300 dollars to play mfin connect four. Sometimes even I question my taste in games.
2006
I'm definitely not as chuzz-pilled as some people I know but this game is a solid time. At its core it's a simple match-3 slide game which isn't really my cup of tea for puzzle games, but the style and polish put into it def kept me playing. It sure is addicting at its core poppin those lil chuzzle dudes. Eventually the game will throw various different hindrances like locking certain spots on the board, throwing rainbow guys that don't match with other colors easily, or making big chuzzles that are hard to pop and hinder slide movement. It certainly can be stressful to play which is a really funny contrast to the colorful visuals and incredibly groovy OST. There's no bespoke ending or anything, you just chuzz on and on to get the highest score before death inevitably comes and puts you in its cold grasp. Such is chuzzle, such is life. The deluxe version includes 3 extra gamemodes. There's Speed chuzzle, which is the same as regular chuzzle except a timer slowly adds more and more locks to the screen and playing quickly extends the timer and delays your inevitable suffocation. There's Zen Chuzzle, which is an endless practice mode to lab out chuzzling to your hearts content. Lastly, there's a puzzle mode that I forgot the name of where you need to match patterns that is neat, but not really the same as the core chuzzle gameplay. There's also a lot of achievements to unlock as you go through the game, completionists will be playing this for centuries. Chuzzle is simple, yes, but in its simplicity is an incredibly addicting puzzle game. I'd play this over bejeweled any day.
i miss popcap
i miss popcap
1997
It's neat but rough around some edges game-design wise. It's an open exploratory platformer, more similar to a Westone title than the typical Metroidvania type of game you'd expect from that kind of genre. It's basically a much expanded take on the Monster Land series. The basic progression is composed of exploring the world to find various tasks and quests that need to be done, and figuring out where to go and how to do them. The levels have depth in them, allowing you to jump in and out of various layers of the foreground and background to explore, giving it a bit of a 2.5D feel (though it's certainly no klonoa visually). The controls feel really tight, the plot doesn't take itself very seriously, the visuals are that colorful pre-rendered silicon graphics ass vibe that we are sorely missing in this day and age, and the soundtrack is funny with its doofy MIDI samples.
Unfortunately there are some major gripes I did have with this game. The biggest problem of all is that despite the fact that this game goes for an explorative "search all the levels for the objectives and secrets" approach to its game structure, there is still a system of limited lives put into the game. Running out of lives just hucks you back to the title screen where you need to reload your last save like most games, but saving in this game also saves the amount of lives you currently have, so saving with a low life count puts you at significantly higher risk for losing progress if you mess up. Couple that with the fact that some areas in the game have bottomless pits that kill you instantly and a problem kinda arises. The conflict between the game structure that wants you to search every aspect of the map and the life system punishing potential leaps of faith/adventurous ideas makes the game feel at ends with itself. I did eventually find a workaround, as save points are quite frequent and saving/loading doesn't take that long. I basically saved my game at every save point like they are level checkpoints, and if i died, I loaded my save back up before the death jingle could finish playing so I didn't lose anything. An inelegant solution, but it worked. My only other problem would be that sometimes the game doesn't really give you a very solid sense of direction/where to go/what to do, but that's kinda the nature of these sorts of games. The map doesn't really help, and all the game really gives for direction is like one-sentence descriptions for each objective that usually don't say much. If you are a kid with endless free time playing this though, that's no issue, but if you are a busy person like me I'd def rec using a guide.
It's a super interesting game for sure and I understand its cult status among PS1 fans. I'd suggest giving it a shot if you like exploratory action games, but it's not one of my personal favorites.
Unfortunately there are some major gripes I did have with this game. The biggest problem of all is that despite the fact that this game goes for an explorative "search all the levels for the objectives and secrets" approach to its game structure, there is still a system of limited lives put into the game. Running out of lives just hucks you back to the title screen where you need to reload your last save like most games, but saving in this game also saves the amount of lives you currently have, so saving with a low life count puts you at significantly higher risk for losing progress if you mess up. Couple that with the fact that some areas in the game have bottomless pits that kill you instantly and a problem kinda arises. The conflict between the game structure that wants you to search every aspect of the map and the life system punishing potential leaps of faith/adventurous ideas makes the game feel at ends with itself. I did eventually find a workaround, as save points are quite frequent and saving/loading doesn't take that long. I basically saved my game at every save point like they are level checkpoints, and if i died, I loaded my save back up before the death jingle could finish playing so I didn't lose anything. An inelegant solution, but it worked. My only other problem would be that sometimes the game doesn't really give you a very solid sense of direction/where to go/what to do, but that's kinda the nature of these sorts of games. The map doesn't really help, and all the game really gives for direction is like one-sentence descriptions for each objective that usually don't say much. If you are a kid with endless free time playing this though, that's no issue, but if you are a busy person like me I'd def rec using a guide.
It's a super interesting game for sure and I understand its cult status among PS1 fans. I'd suggest giving it a shot if you like exploratory action games, but it's not one of my personal favorites.
DAW SKEET SKEET SKEET SKEET SKEET SKEET
The vibes in this game go hard, I want to live in this 2003-ass city of perpetual nighttime. Everything is well lit and rendered, there's a copious amount of 6th-gen motion blur everywhere when you go fast, but things still manage to be (for the most part) readable. The OST is a bit hit-and-miss though, I like the dumpy menu music beats but the race music being more 2000s edgy emo type vibes was kinda unfitting to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big sucker for that stuff, and it also serves to solidify this game as an excellent time piece, but it seems more fitting for daytime racing than underground nighttime racing. I associate night vibes with like techno-y D'n'B-y adrenaline vibes and not hard guitars and edge I guess, but that's probably more of a me thing. Despite all that, the vibes this game has are my jam, love this kinda shit. I haven't seen any of the fast and furious movies, but I have heard that this games aesthetic is borrowed heavily from em so I might have to give em a watch.
On the game front though, this game is a bit hrmmm. 112 events to do is kinda exhausting, and the AI has that classic need for speed rubberbanding. It reminded me of playing NFS2, where you could run a perfect race and fuck up on the last turn and everything would be for naught. The weighty momentum-y feel of the cars plus the aggressive rubberbanding and decent amounts of traffic means the lategame is really frustrating, as fuckups are easy and will ruin your race many, MANY times. Nerfing your car and setting the difficulty to easy can mitigate a bit of the AI problems, but at the end of the day the events still end up feeling like a bit of RNG, where you just gotta keep retryin over and over again until the game feels generous enough to let you win. There are other non-racey events like drift point challenges which are fun and these weird drag race minigames that are less fun and are more just memorization of where traffic spawns to avoid.
It's a decent tonal shift of the NFS series while keeping the same style of gameplay, and I've heard Underground 2 is where the wheels really start turning so it's probably better to play that instead if you want your early 2000s night city racing fix.
The vibes in this game go hard, I want to live in this 2003-ass city of perpetual nighttime. Everything is well lit and rendered, there's a copious amount of 6th-gen motion blur everywhere when you go fast, but things still manage to be (for the most part) readable. The OST is a bit hit-and-miss though, I like the dumpy menu music beats but the race music being more 2000s edgy emo type vibes was kinda unfitting to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big sucker for that stuff, and it also serves to solidify this game as an excellent time piece, but it seems more fitting for daytime racing than underground nighttime racing. I associate night vibes with like techno-y D'n'B-y adrenaline vibes and not hard guitars and edge I guess, but that's probably more of a me thing. Despite all that, the vibes this game has are my jam, love this kinda shit. I haven't seen any of the fast and furious movies, but I have heard that this games aesthetic is borrowed heavily from em so I might have to give em a watch.
On the game front though, this game is a bit hrmmm. 112 events to do is kinda exhausting, and the AI has that classic need for speed rubberbanding. It reminded me of playing NFS2, where you could run a perfect race and fuck up on the last turn and everything would be for naught. The weighty momentum-y feel of the cars plus the aggressive rubberbanding and decent amounts of traffic means the lategame is really frustrating, as fuckups are easy and will ruin your race many, MANY times. Nerfing your car and setting the difficulty to easy can mitigate a bit of the AI problems, but at the end of the day the events still end up feeling like a bit of RNG, where you just gotta keep retryin over and over again until the game feels generous enough to let you win. There are other non-racey events like drift point challenges which are fun and these weird drag race minigames that are less fun and are more just memorization of where traffic spawns to avoid.
It's a decent tonal shift of the NFS series while keeping the same style of gameplay, and I've heard Underground 2 is where the wheels really start turning so it's probably better to play that instead if you want your early 2000s night city racing fix.
Absolute banger of a video game. Aesthetically this game has so much mfin style in it, it's just so COOL. From the sleek and iconic character icons and portraits, the dark color palette, that sick bass lick that plays every time you clear a mission, this game is designed to be as cool as possible and it excels with flying colors. The sound design is also fantastic, all the deep sound effects are used in such a way that there's always a good sense of tension when sneaking around, plus the game encourages keeping a close ear to the sounds since collectables have that satisfying clunky noise when you are near one. The gameplay is also excellent; this game takes the idea of a hub world and kinda flips it on its head as a place to be scouted out in order to plan a heist. Each of the missions to go to in the hubs are all different parts of one greater heist that the whole area of the game builds up to, and as I went through the missions I really got that sense of familiarity with my surroundings that the cumulative heist sections actually served to test. It's genius, honestly. The plot is also great with a serious tone, good writing, and great character interactions. The Cooper gang actually feels like a close, functional team in a lot of ways most other platformer character trios don't. My only kinda gripes I could have with the game are that it does feel a bit too long and they kinda re-use area themes a bit. The tiger and bison dudes got 2 chapters each when 1 could have been enough. The boss fights and really combat as a whole was kinda eh, which made playing as murray kinda not as fun as sly or bentley since his missions were more combat-oriented. Despite those small qualms, this game is really mfin good and if you like platformers or the general vibes of being a thief and planning a heist there's some good shit here.
2023
Forever in search of the sauce...
When the first trailer of this game dropped, it had my attention hook, line, and sinker. Ever since sega themselves dropped the Jet Set Radio IP like a 10-ton weight, many have tried to create a game to match the style and vibe of the series with middling results. I knew that I had to give this game a go, and when it finally dropped, I knew that it was time to see what they were cooking all this time. Now that I've given it a play, I have very complicated feelings.
The game NAILED the look of the Jet Set Radio games, with the perfect level of low-poly cel-shading that the series is famous for. The music is also fantastic, as not only are there the expected bangers created by everyone's favorite family guy funny moment, but most of the OST as a whole has that bumpin funky vibe to it. Mechanically things are solid as well, with controls feeling a lot more tight, grounded, and responsive. The JSR series is probably as infamous for filtering players with its floaty controls and awkward character physics as it is famous for its art style, so this really feels like the controls were made so that kind of thing wouldn't happen. The game looks and sounds great, and is fun to play.
But deep down as I was playing through the game, something felt off, and I still even after putting the controller down don't really know how to put it to words. The game just wasn't giving me that same visceral "kick" that playing the JSR games do, likely due to various small things that just kept stacking atop one another. The plot didn't grab me whatsoever, and there were far too many cutscenes for my liking. The writing was kinda eh, the characters lacked the charisma that the GG's and Professor K had, and things were taken far too seriously for me to really vibe with it. The game also left me feeling rather directionless a lot of the time, as in the JSR games finding where you need to tag is only a press of the start button away, but in this game being able to see where tag points are on the map requires an upgrade, so I spent a lot of time just kinda aimlessly skating around. The tag points also aren't really as clearly defined as the big arrowed markers that define them in the JSR games. The trick/score system is kind of braindead in that manualling is piss easy by holding down a trigger and getting high multipliers just requires grinding on rails and doing wallrides. If this game took more inspiration from the tony hawk games in terms of its trick system that would have activated every neuron in my monkey brain and I would have went crazy, but instead we get this kinda boring way to rack easy points. There's also like some of the most boneless combat I have ever seen in this game, as attacks feel extremely weightless and your auto-regenerating health pool is so big that it makes encounters feel more like a waste of time than anything meaningful. JSR just had you paint people on the back a few times and cops served more as obstacles rather than full-blown fighting encounters.
It's probably not the fairest to keep comparing this game to JSR, but it's really hard not to when everything about this game just feels like it's trying its absolute hardest to be JSR, and the things that it does differently like the focus on story just really wasn't clicking with me. There are these segments where you have to platform through these Mario Sunshine Psychonauts ass floating levels of stuff, and those parts were probably the highlight of the game for me just because the game was trying to do something unique. I think a portion of this weird nothingness I felt when playing this game just came from me wanting this game to be JSR, and the game itself wanting to be JSR, but it just isn't. Maybe I set my expectations way too high (another reason why zero expectations are the best expectations), maybe part of my enjoyment of games like this comes from the context in their creation whereas the original JSR games are actual products of their time vs this game being made as an homage to said time but isn't an actual product of its time itself, thus giving me uncanny valley type beats, i have no idea. I even went back to play a fair bit of both JSR games during my play of this to see if the appeal of these games had lost their luster to me over time, but nope I was still having a blast playing those and not so much over here.
It's extremely frustrating seeing something that by all of my understandings and definitions should be hitting the same as the series that it takes so much inspiration from just not doing so. It's as if the appeal of JSR comes from this secret sauce that Sega put into it that I haven't been able to see anyone else effectively recreate. I may not know what's actually in the damn sauce, but I'm gonna keep searching for it especially given how Sega ain't ever using it any more and I'm sure by now even they have thrown out the recipe. All of this isn't to say this game is bad. Despite all I have said there are still solid vibes and I think this is a much more accesible way to experience the style of JSR than playing the old games in a modern sense. It's absolutely clear to me that Team Reptile cares a lot for this particular aesthetic, and I on principle cannot hate anything that keeps the Y2K vibes going in our present day. By all means, please give the game a go if it looks interesting to ya. I just wish I was as ecstatic about this game as all the other JSR fans/people on this site. Either way, this will probably still be better than whatever the fuck sega actually could have in store for the JSR series. God help us.
When the first trailer of this game dropped, it had my attention hook, line, and sinker. Ever since sega themselves dropped the Jet Set Radio IP like a 10-ton weight, many have tried to create a game to match the style and vibe of the series with middling results. I knew that I had to give this game a go, and when it finally dropped, I knew that it was time to see what they were cooking all this time. Now that I've given it a play, I have very complicated feelings.
The game NAILED the look of the Jet Set Radio games, with the perfect level of low-poly cel-shading that the series is famous for. The music is also fantastic, as not only are there the expected bangers created by everyone's favorite family guy funny moment, but most of the OST as a whole has that bumpin funky vibe to it. Mechanically things are solid as well, with controls feeling a lot more tight, grounded, and responsive. The JSR series is probably as infamous for filtering players with its floaty controls and awkward character physics as it is famous for its art style, so this really feels like the controls were made so that kind of thing wouldn't happen. The game looks and sounds great, and is fun to play.
But deep down as I was playing through the game, something felt off, and I still even after putting the controller down don't really know how to put it to words. The game just wasn't giving me that same visceral "kick" that playing the JSR games do, likely due to various small things that just kept stacking atop one another. The plot didn't grab me whatsoever, and there were far too many cutscenes for my liking. The writing was kinda eh, the characters lacked the charisma that the GG's and Professor K had, and things were taken far too seriously for me to really vibe with it. The game also left me feeling rather directionless a lot of the time, as in the JSR games finding where you need to tag is only a press of the start button away, but in this game being able to see where tag points are on the map requires an upgrade, so I spent a lot of time just kinda aimlessly skating around. The tag points also aren't really as clearly defined as the big arrowed markers that define them in the JSR games. The trick/score system is kind of braindead in that manualling is piss easy by holding down a trigger and getting high multipliers just requires grinding on rails and doing wallrides. If this game took more inspiration from the tony hawk games in terms of its trick system that would have activated every neuron in my monkey brain and I would have went crazy, but instead we get this kinda boring way to rack easy points. There's also like some of the most boneless combat I have ever seen in this game, as attacks feel extremely weightless and your auto-regenerating health pool is so big that it makes encounters feel more like a waste of time than anything meaningful. JSR just had you paint people on the back a few times and cops served more as obstacles rather than full-blown fighting encounters.
It's probably not the fairest to keep comparing this game to JSR, but it's really hard not to when everything about this game just feels like it's trying its absolute hardest to be JSR, and the things that it does differently like the focus on story just really wasn't clicking with me. There are these segments where you have to platform through these Mario Sunshine Psychonauts ass floating levels of stuff, and those parts were probably the highlight of the game for me just because the game was trying to do something unique. I think a portion of this weird nothingness I felt when playing this game just came from me wanting this game to be JSR, and the game itself wanting to be JSR, but it just isn't. Maybe I set my expectations way too high (another reason why zero expectations are the best expectations), maybe part of my enjoyment of games like this comes from the context in their creation whereas the original JSR games are actual products of their time vs this game being made as an homage to said time but isn't an actual product of its time itself, thus giving me uncanny valley type beats, i have no idea. I even went back to play a fair bit of both JSR games during my play of this to see if the appeal of these games had lost their luster to me over time, but nope I was still having a blast playing those and not so much over here.
It's extremely frustrating seeing something that by all of my understandings and definitions should be hitting the same as the series that it takes so much inspiration from just not doing so. It's as if the appeal of JSR comes from this secret sauce that Sega put into it that I haven't been able to see anyone else effectively recreate. I may not know what's actually in the damn sauce, but I'm gonna keep searching for it especially given how Sega ain't ever using it any more and I'm sure by now even they have thrown out the recipe. All of this isn't to say this game is bad. Despite all I have said there are still solid vibes and I think this is a much more accesible way to experience the style of JSR than playing the old games in a modern sense. It's absolutely clear to me that Team Reptile cares a lot for this particular aesthetic, and I on principle cannot hate anything that keeps the Y2K vibes going in our present day. By all means, please give the game a go if it looks interesting to ya. I just wish I was as ecstatic about this game as all the other JSR fans/people on this site. Either way, this will probably still be better than whatever the fuck sega actually could have in store for the JSR series. God help us.
They made wii play minigames out of Twilight Princess. This game just confuses me. Why use Twilight Princess to make a demo pack-in game for the Wii Zapper? Why does the Wii Zapper even need a pack-in game? The wii zapper is just a piece of plastic, this game is 100% playable without it. No particular features of the zapper are utilized in this outside of the pointer controls, but Wii Play already kinda existed to be a demonstration of the pointer controls.
The actual gameplay itself is just a bunch of rail-shootery light gun gamey missions that you do in a quick succession. The game really favors accuracy over speed as getting hit combos is the easiest way to get points by far, and missing one shot drops a combo. If you play cautiously and refine your run, getting platinum rankings on each of the stages is a cakewalk.
When I looked up the development of this game, thinking it was just a quick job to make a quick little pack in title for the wii zapper, I was even more confused with the development history of this game than I was with the actual game itself. Apparently this could have been a sequel to twilight princess, or some weird terminator-styled side story where they gave link a gun. Despite the empty-calorie feeling this game has in its own playtime, it's like an hour long to go through everything and the minigames still have a solid level of polish put into them so it doesn't feel like no care was put into it. Worth a shot off of curiosity alone, I'd say.
The actual gameplay itself is just a bunch of rail-shootery light gun gamey missions that you do in a quick succession. The game really favors accuracy over speed as getting hit combos is the easiest way to get points by far, and missing one shot drops a combo. If you play cautiously and refine your run, getting platinum rankings on each of the stages is a cakewalk.
When I looked up the development of this game, thinking it was just a quick job to make a quick little pack in title for the wii zapper, I was even more confused with the development history of this game than I was with the actual game itself. Apparently this could have been a sequel to twilight princess, or some weird terminator-styled side story where they gave link a gun. Despite the empty-calorie feeling this game has in its own playtime, it's like an hour long to go through everything and the minigames still have a solid level of polish put into them so it doesn't feel like no care was put into it. Worth a shot off of curiosity alone, I'd say.
It's neat!
Def goes a bit too far in the "hey remember ocarina of time guys" vibes but I feel like that was more due to overcorrection from the backlash that wind waker got for being too colorful. It's definitely a product of its time, given that gaming as a whole was shifting to darker, edgier, more mature vibes. Which is kind of weird, since it's both the swansong of the Gamecube, a system that in its time had a reputation of being a "baby toy", as well as the introduction of the Wii, a console that retrospectively is known for being the casual system. It's def a weird tonal direction, but honestly I think that alone makes it all the more unique.
From a gameplay perspective, this is the dungeon game. The overworld isn't as vast or explorable here, and the optional side content offerings are quite sparse. The focus here is on a lot of dungeons, and they are quite good. The items are unique, albeit a few being a bit underutilized in the grand scheme of things (spinner my beloved), and the dungeon themes are cool. Personally my favorite part of zelda is the explorative aspect though, so sometimes things felt like they dragged on a bit as I was hit with back-to-back dungeoneering.
I have played a lot of Gamecube games in my time, and I can safely say this is one of, if not THE best looking game I have ever seen on the system. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard on the bloom, sure, but the fact that they have lighting and texturework this good on a gamecube game is insanely impressive and the game is a real visual treat.
The plot was also just your typical zelda goings-ons, nothing too crazy there. I did like the characters, though. Zant is a cool villain, Midna is pretty cool (though her fans scare me), the whole beginning village posse of kids are likable, there's mfin jesus in karariko village, the gorons are homies as always, that kinda vibes. The only eh characters are these like weird knight side characters that are played up to be a big deal but only do like one singular thing in the whole story and then are never mentioned or show up ever again so that was certainly something.
Despite the derivative nature of the game overall being a bit of an OoT rehash, the dungeon-focused design not being particularly my fancy, and the plot being there, something about this game still felt inherently satisfying. Perhaps it's because I liked OoT a decent amount so being an imitator of that isn't inherently a bad thing, and perhaps it's just because the vibes this game has are just that solid. If you like zelda dungeons, this do be a must-play. One of those games that's def greater than the sum of its parts.
Def goes a bit too far in the "hey remember ocarina of time guys" vibes but I feel like that was more due to overcorrection from the backlash that wind waker got for being too colorful. It's definitely a product of its time, given that gaming as a whole was shifting to darker, edgier, more mature vibes. Which is kind of weird, since it's both the swansong of the Gamecube, a system that in its time had a reputation of being a "baby toy", as well as the introduction of the Wii, a console that retrospectively is known for being the casual system. It's def a weird tonal direction, but honestly I think that alone makes it all the more unique.
From a gameplay perspective, this is the dungeon game. The overworld isn't as vast or explorable here, and the optional side content offerings are quite sparse. The focus here is on a lot of dungeons, and they are quite good. The items are unique, albeit a few being a bit underutilized in the grand scheme of things (spinner my beloved), and the dungeon themes are cool. Personally my favorite part of zelda is the explorative aspect though, so sometimes things felt like they dragged on a bit as I was hit with back-to-back dungeoneering.
I have played a lot of Gamecube games in my time, and I can safely say this is one of, if not THE best looking game I have ever seen on the system. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard on the bloom, sure, but the fact that they have lighting and texturework this good on a gamecube game is insanely impressive and the game is a real visual treat.
The plot was also just your typical zelda goings-ons, nothing too crazy there. I did like the characters, though. Zant is a cool villain, Midna is pretty cool (though her fans scare me), the whole beginning village posse of kids are likable, there's mfin jesus in karariko village, the gorons are homies as always, that kinda vibes. The only eh characters are these like weird knight side characters that are played up to be a big deal but only do like one singular thing in the whole story and then are never mentioned or show up ever again so that was certainly something.
Despite the derivative nature of the game overall being a bit of an OoT rehash, the dungeon-focused design not being particularly my fancy, and the plot being there, something about this game still felt inherently satisfying. Perhaps it's because I liked OoT a decent amount so being an imitator of that isn't inherently a bad thing, and perhaps it's just because the vibes this game has are just that solid. If you like zelda dungeons, this do be a must-play. One of those games that's def greater than the sum of its parts.
Was scrolling through the various Atomiswave-to-Dreamcast ports and stumbled upon this game with friends. This is one of those video games that just doesn't feel real, like something you'd see being played in the background of the simpsons or some shit. It's an arcade football game where the teams are composed of a regular football team, zombies, aliens, punk goth girls, prison convicts, trained hitmen, WWE wrestlers, and furries. Everyone animates and moves like a bowling alley strike animation, it's great. There's also meter management that is used for super moves or for boosts to get your players running faster. I don't give a singular flying shit about football so I really don't know how it stacks up to other arcade football titles like NFL blitz, but the amount of dumb absurdity on display is more than enough to set my monkey brain aflame. A true legend of bakage and honestly if I ever find this game in person at an actual arcade I would probably pop off harder than if I found something with more prestige. If watching a suited hitman tackle a skeleton literally named "boner" before breaking out in an awkward mocapped touchdown dance doesn't sell you on this game, I don't think anything ever will.
It's daytona but with more stuff to do but with a different feel, for better or for worse. A few new tracks added in, a different assortment of race cars with different stats to pick from, and an entirely new soundtrack. I was gaslit by the internet into believing that the original saturn port of Daytona wasn't that good, but upon playing it back-to-back with this version they are honestly both worth giving a go.
While the original port has a much lower framerate and chunkier visuals, it was (i think) developed by AM2 in-house and is actually a totally viable way to get a daytona fix so long as you can see past the chonk. Rather than expanding upon that framework, CCE was made by AM3 and uses their Saturn Sega Rally engine. It do mean that the game has a greater draw distance, sharper visuals, and a really consistent framerate, though at the cost of gameplay authenticity. Daytona purists will not like how this game feels, but on its own it felt perfectly solid to play. Daytona games usually feel like hot ass if you use a pad instead of a wheel or play on automatic but honestly this game controls decent with both and you can even use the differently tuned cars to match your driving demands. It's all solid stuff honestly.
The soundtrack is another thing that Daytona purists will not enjoy, as our boy Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was not put in the composer's seat for this. HOWEVER, the people they DO have on board for the new tracks are no slouches. Jun Senoue, Richard Jacques, Kenichi Tokoi, and Tomonori Sawada all have extremely strong music portfolios within Sega and their contributions here are great. Yea, Daytona without the iconic vocal tracks def hits different, but I wouldn't discredit the entire new OST because of that. The Japanese version of this game includes all the original songs as well as a medley so if you REALLY need the original OST, get that version.
This game also has like a bunch of different versions, with the aforementioned JPN version also having a supposedly more stable framerate and wider draw distance from the US version? There's also the extremely expensive netlink edition that has online play available, though I wasn't able to try the online features. There are ways to get your saturn online these days and I do have the ol DreamPi still configured, but as of now I can't justify buying a netlink adapter when I have zero people to play with. Maybe some day... (ayo any netlink gamers reading this HMU!!!) There's also local multiplayer but I'm by myself so I have no idea how that looks or runs either. Still cool when the original saturn port didn't have any form of multiplayer!
It's a good racing game, just not a very faithful daytona game, and I think that's prob where all the mixed reception comes from. Def something worth trying out if you are into 32-bit racers.
While the original port has a much lower framerate and chunkier visuals, it was (i think) developed by AM2 in-house and is actually a totally viable way to get a daytona fix so long as you can see past the chonk. Rather than expanding upon that framework, CCE was made by AM3 and uses their Saturn Sega Rally engine. It do mean that the game has a greater draw distance, sharper visuals, and a really consistent framerate, though at the cost of gameplay authenticity. Daytona purists will not like how this game feels, but on its own it felt perfectly solid to play. Daytona games usually feel like hot ass if you use a pad instead of a wheel or play on automatic but honestly this game controls decent with both and you can even use the differently tuned cars to match your driving demands. It's all solid stuff honestly.
The soundtrack is another thing that Daytona purists will not enjoy, as our boy Takenobu Mitsuyoshi was not put in the composer's seat for this. HOWEVER, the people they DO have on board for the new tracks are no slouches. Jun Senoue, Richard Jacques, Kenichi Tokoi, and Tomonori Sawada all have extremely strong music portfolios within Sega and their contributions here are great. Yea, Daytona without the iconic vocal tracks def hits different, but I wouldn't discredit the entire new OST because of that. The Japanese version of this game includes all the original songs as well as a medley so if you REALLY need the original OST, get that version.
This game also has like a bunch of different versions, with the aforementioned JPN version also having a supposedly more stable framerate and wider draw distance from the US version? There's also the extremely expensive netlink edition that has online play available, though I wasn't able to try the online features. There are ways to get your saturn online these days and I do have the ol DreamPi still configured, but as of now I can't justify buying a netlink adapter when I have zero people to play with. Maybe some day... (ayo any netlink gamers reading this HMU!!!) There's also local multiplayer but I'm by myself so I have no idea how that looks or runs either. Still cool when the original saturn port didn't have any form of multiplayer!
It's a good racing game, just not a very faithful daytona game, and I think that's prob where all the mixed reception comes from. Def something worth trying out if you are into 32-bit racers.
2023
Well. Guess this dropped, huh? F-zero fans eating.... okay? decently? It's something?
(forewarning: im quite the f-zero fan that has pretty much done everything there is to do in the series. I've played all the games, seen the entirety of the shitty kids anime that gets kinda good near the end, etc etc etc)
The concept of taking F-zero and putting it into a battle royale isn't bad at all. The games have already had quite a death-race battle-royale style vibe to them since the beginning, seeing as there are tons of racers on a track and murder is a viable option to success, so bringing it online with dozens of other real humans sounds like a no-brainer, and the "grand new idea" that the series apparently needed to get a new game, supposedly.
Though when I heard the rumors that F-zero 99 was reportedly going to be a thing, and given nintendo's current track record with how they handled battle royale games, I definitely was thinking of the monkey's paw.
And well well well lookee what we got.
It's kinda obvious to see why certain series fans can be frustrated by this release, given both how predictable and sterile it is and how this is the culmination of a 20-something year old wait for something, anything new outside of various smash appearances, some blue falcon cameos, and a jank Nintendo Land minigame.
Putting those frustrations aside for a minute, what we ended up getting is honestly pretty alright. Of what I can tell all the content from the SNES game is here, presented in full HD widescreen goodness. The controls are a bit different this time around, as this marks the first time a mode-7 style F-zero game can be played with an analogue control stick, and as such the cornering feels noticeably different from the snappy stop-and-go twitch controls of the original SNES game. Add the boost-from-health mechanic and spin attack taken from the later games, and the game honestly feels more like the GBA F-zeros than a straight port of the SNES one.
The battle royale style of gameplay is great in concept but the execution is a bit hmm. Of the many rounds I played, I found that sitting in the upper-middle of the pack to collect the weird meter-building dots and using the super boost to snipe the last lap at the very end pretty much guaranteed a spot in the top 10 every time. With all the shit flying around everywhere, using boost never really seems very worth it, as even in first place the game throws enough bogus AI obstacles and dead players trying to bump into you where there's never really a moment where the whole track is clear to safely use boost. Once I figured out that sort of game plan, it really wasn't that hard to consistently get Ws.
One cool thing about the game is the grand prix system where things become more endurance-based as players are graded upon their performances in multiple races in a row. It's really cool to see the numbers whittle down over time as your opponents either get ranked out or just end up exploding throughout the races, and it provides a good sense of tension to clutch out wins in those events. Only problem is most events like that are not only time limited but also have some dumb mobile game-ass in-game currency that needs to be spent in order to actually participate. Considering the fact that both Tetris and Pac-man 99 had a bunch of microtransactions/DLC that needs to be bought I can imagine they will try to do the same here, and that's never really my kind of vibe.
I don't think this game was low-effort, as the various control differences, visual improvements, and gamemodes lead me to believe that this is made from the ground up rather than having the sort of romhacky feel that the mario and pac man battle royale games did. If they made this game look more visually distinct (whether that be actually having done 3D or even just going for a more modernized pixel look a-la the GBA games), brought in new tracks and a variety of racers from the series to use instead of only the four original machines (hell, the SATELLAVIEW GAMES even gave new characters to race as for pete's sake!) then I feel like the reception to this would have been a little more warm. With how they basically needed to make this game from scratch in the first place, it probably wouldn't have had to have been that much more effort to make it look and feel fresh. It's Nintendo's strange insistence that this game HAD to be a "throwback" title, limited to only the same content that was originally there with little to no additions, that holds this game back. And for some reason, Nintendo seems to treat most of their back catalogue the same way.
All in all, it's fine. I didn't really hate it as much as I thought I was going to, but things get stale pretty quickly. Considering the fact that with the previous Battle Royale games that Nintendo has put out I play them at launch day, win a few rounds, and then call it a day, I am more than sure that's what's also going to happen with this. And seeing as Pac-man 99 is going to get shut down soon, I wouldn't be surprised if this shares the same fate in about a year or so down the line. If you are a fan of battle royale games or racers, you might as well give it a shot. It is free, after all.
The long-running gag of F-zero fans being starved of new games ended today, and on a rather flat note. We have our new game, guys. See you in another 19 years, I guess.
(forewarning: im quite the f-zero fan that has pretty much done everything there is to do in the series. I've played all the games, seen the entirety of the shitty kids anime that gets kinda good near the end, etc etc etc)
The concept of taking F-zero and putting it into a battle royale isn't bad at all. The games have already had quite a death-race battle-royale style vibe to them since the beginning, seeing as there are tons of racers on a track and murder is a viable option to success, so bringing it online with dozens of other real humans sounds like a no-brainer, and the "grand new idea" that the series apparently needed to get a new game, supposedly.
Though when I heard the rumors that F-zero 99 was reportedly going to be a thing, and given nintendo's current track record with how they handled battle royale games, I definitely was thinking of the monkey's paw.
And well well well lookee what we got.
It's kinda obvious to see why certain series fans can be frustrated by this release, given both how predictable and sterile it is and how this is the culmination of a 20-something year old wait for something, anything new outside of various smash appearances, some blue falcon cameos, and a jank Nintendo Land minigame.
Putting those frustrations aside for a minute, what we ended up getting is honestly pretty alright. Of what I can tell all the content from the SNES game is here, presented in full HD widescreen goodness. The controls are a bit different this time around, as this marks the first time a mode-7 style F-zero game can be played with an analogue control stick, and as such the cornering feels noticeably different from the snappy stop-and-go twitch controls of the original SNES game. Add the boost-from-health mechanic and spin attack taken from the later games, and the game honestly feels more like the GBA F-zeros than a straight port of the SNES one.
The battle royale style of gameplay is great in concept but the execution is a bit hmm. Of the many rounds I played, I found that sitting in the upper-middle of the pack to collect the weird meter-building dots and using the super boost to snipe the last lap at the very end pretty much guaranteed a spot in the top 10 every time. With all the shit flying around everywhere, using boost never really seems very worth it, as even in first place the game throws enough bogus AI obstacles and dead players trying to bump into you where there's never really a moment where the whole track is clear to safely use boost. Once I figured out that sort of game plan, it really wasn't that hard to consistently get Ws.
One cool thing about the game is the grand prix system where things become more endurance-based as players are graded upon their performances in multiple races in a row. It's really cool to see the numbers whittle down over time as your opponents either get ranked out or just end up exploding throughout the races, and it provides a good sense of tension to clutch out wins in those events. Only problem is most events like that are not only time limited but also have some dumb mobile game-ass in-game currency that needs to be spent in order to actually participate. Considering the fact that both Tetris and Pac-man 99 had a bunch of microtransactions/DLC that needs to be bought I can imagine they will try to do the same here, and that's never really my kind of vibe.
I don't think this game was low-effort, as the various control differences, visual improvements, and gamemodes lead me to believe that this is made from the ground up rather than having the sort of romhacky feel that the mario and pac man battle royale games did. If they made this game look more visually distinct (whether that be actually having done 3D or even just going for a more modernized pixel look a-la the GBA games), brought in new tracks and a variety of racers from the series to use instead of only the four original machines (hell, the SATELLAVIEW GAMES even gave new characters to race as for pete's sake!) then I feel like the reception to this would have been a little more warm. With how they basically needed to make this game from scratch in the first place, it probably wouldn't have had to have been that much more effort to make it look and feel fresh. It's Nintendo's strange insistence that this game HAD to be a "throwback" title, limited to only the same content that was originally there with little to no additions, that holds this game back. And for some reason, Nintendo seems to treat most of their back catalogue the same way.
All in all, it's fine. I didn't really hate it as much as I thought I was going to, but things get stale pretty quickly. Considering the fact that with the previous Battle Royale games that Nintendo has put out I play them at launch day, win a few rounds, and then call it a day, I am more than sure that's what's also going to happen with this. And seeing as Pac-man 99 is going to get shut down soon, I wouldn't be surprised if this shares the same fate in about a year or so down the line. If you are a fan of battle royale games or racers, you might as well give it a shot. It is free, after all.
The long-running gag of F-zero fans being starved of new games ended today, and on a rather flat note. We have our new game, guys. See you in another 19 years, I guess.
2012
Hot diggity damn, Sakurai really doesn't miss. This game from beginning to end fires on pretty much all cylinders with zero breaks or stops. It looks visually stunning (especially in 3D), has a phenomenal soundtrack with an all-star cast of composers, has great writing with equally good delivery, depth in its combat with the different weapon types and flick tech, hell even a really damn solid multiplayer mode with both local and online play. This game has mfin EVERYTHING, and each thing is crafted with such a huge amount of polish that it's an absolute blast to play.
My only real gripes would be in the ground segments of the game, in that I felt like they were too long and rely a bit too much on flicking the circle pad constantly in a lot of ways that feels imprecise, and the game kinda demands precision so the flicking kinda becomes a hindrance to the games control. I dropped the game halfway through back when it first came out because of how long the ground sections just dragged on and on. The flying sections are easily the best part of the game though, as they pretty much are sin and punishment levels with their spectacle and control.
I know this is a pretty highly demanded game to be brought to the switch or had a sequel made, and I can certainly understand the hype. However considering both the games development history and overall balance, I don't think that would be very likely. Apparently this game was developed by a one-and-done ragtag team that was made specifically to make only this game before disbanding, so I don't think they can get back together for a port or a sequel... I do hope they at least preserved the source code... The game is also designed around extremely quick precise camera and aiming controls that is done through swiping the touch screen like a trackball, and the overall game speed and balance is quick and snappy to compensate for that advanced precision you get. It's something that I don't think could translate to like any other type of control scheme outside of an actual IRL trackball, so that's kinda another thing going against it getting the ol HD switch treatment unless they essentially rebalance the entire game to accommodate a less precise and slower control scheme. That's not even considering things like how the game uses the bottom screen to run its radio drama-esque dialogue portraits in an unobtrusive way. Like it or not, this game is made for the 3DS, and on this system it will stay. Honestly, I'm fine with that. This game feels so complete that I honestly don't know what they could do should a sequel come along. It's not exactly flawless, but it's pretty damn close. An ABSOLUTE must-play on the 3DS library, especially if you like your games flashy and bombastic.
My only real gripes would be in the ground segments of the game, in that I felt like they were too long and rely a bit too much on flicking the circle pad constantly in a lot of ways that feels imprecise, and the game kinda demands precision so the flicking kinda becomes a hindrance to the games control. I dropped the game halfway through back when it first came out because of how long the ground sections just dragged on and on. The flying sections are easily the best part of the game though, as they pretty much are sin and punishment levels with their spectacle and control.
I know this is a pretty highly demanded game to be brought to the switch or had a sequel made, and I can certainly understand the hype. However considering both the games development history and overall balance, I don't think that would be very likely. Apparently this game was developed by a one-and-done ragtag team that was made specifically to make only this game before disbanding, so I don't think they can get back together for a port or a sequel... I do hope they at least preserved the source code... The game is also designed around extremely quick precise camera and aiming controls that is done through swiping the touch screen like a trackball, and the overall game speed and balance is quick and snappy to compensate for that advanced precision you get. It's something that I don't think could translate to like any other type of control scheme outside of an actual IRL trackball, so that's kinda another thing going against it getting the ol HD switch treatment unless they essentially rebalance the entire game to accommodate a less precise and slower control scheme. That's not even considering things like how the game uses the bottom screen to run its radio drama-esque dialogue portraits in an unobtrusive way. Like it or not, this game is made for the 3DS, and on this system it will stay. Honestly, I'm fine with that. This game feels so complete that I honestly don't know what they could do should a sequel come along. It's not exactly flawless, but it's pretty damn close. An ABSOLUTE must-play on the 3DS library, especially if you like your games flashy and bombastic.
2004
Gran Turismo 4. This is it. I don't think I can overstate how big this game is, both in terms of its content and its legacy within the racing game genre. This game basically takes everything from the previous GT games and cranks it up to inhuman levels. The GT series to this point has always been in the upper echelon of console racing games, but with this game, they basically created a golden standard for the genre. Like, when the developers for the first Forza game were talking about competing with the PS2, they weren't talking about the GT series as a whole. They, like many others, were trying to dethrone this game specifically. That's how big this game is. It's an absolutely monumental racing game that can absolutely last you a lifetime with how much content it has. With all that being said though, it still ain't my favorite racing game, or hell, even GT game.
Firstly, the good. They basically took GT3 and gave it a simulation mode that puts it more in-line with the insane sim mode in GT2. There's the same "do events, earn new cars that give you access to new events" loop that made GT2 so engaging, and there's things like used car dealerships to get rid of the credit-grind slog that was GT3's campaign. There are over 700 cars to collect across all sorts of events. Circuit tracks, city tracks, one-make manufacturer events, specific car type events, rally events, endurance events, you name it and it's here with an insane amount of polish. The driving in this game is the best that the series has been up to this point, with it having that nice realistic feel to it. I am no real life race car driver so I can't actually comment on how ACTUALLY real it is, but it certainly has a good feel to it. The UI and soundtrack are as fantastic as always (though I still found the licensed race music kinda eh but I think that's just how things are gonna be), and visually this is one of the best looking games on the PS2 with an insane amount of visual polish, and even support for progressive scan and a mode that uses some interlaced shenanigans to get a high-res mode of 576x960!!! Considering the power of the PS2 the fact that they can get something like that working at all is incredible, much less running as good as it does with the visuals that it has. In terms of technical mastery, gameplay polish, and stylish UI, this is the GT PS2 magnum opus.
But unfortunately, there are still quite a bit of qualms that I have had with this game in my entire playthrough. While I do have a decent enough PS2 wheel that I can use with this game, I really don't prefer to play with a racing wheel over a pad and I don't have a good place to even set up the wheel anyways so I was kinda screwed on the control front. The game uses the pressure-sensitive buttons on the PS2 controller and it's not able to ever be turned off, and I find the dualshock 2's pressure sensitivity to be a bit too mushy to be used as precisely as needed for a type of racing game like this. I played the first half of the game using a very cobbled-together wheel setup that shook when literally any FFB happened, before eventually giving up to use a controller with the steering bound to the left stick and accelerator bound to the right. Neither control scheme was really elegant for me. If this game supported the neGcon (which it very well could have), then this would all be a non-issue and it would absolutely elevate this game to an 11/10 status, but some things are just not meant to be. The high-resolution mode is also more of a gimmick than anything, as my upscaler didn't really like how it tried to display the image, my cables are too crummy to get the best out of it, and the menus and UI all run at 480i anyways so I honestly stuck to the default resolution the whole game as well. Lastly, my final issue with the game comes from its pacing. While the core racing structure of GT2 is back in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as well-paced when it comes to what agency the game gives through prize cars. A lot of events end up giving you a prize car that can't really be used anywhere else, leading to a lot of "dead end" moments, where I just kinda had to sell the car for credits to get the cars that I did need, or just ignored them altogether. Since earning certain things is locked to overall completion percentage, I found the best thing to do was just to do the rally events as they offered the highest payouts alongside cars that I could actually use in a multitude of events. Playing that way just meant I spent most of my time doing a bunch of really slippery rally events, when I'm honestly more of a fan of the street/circuit racing... And then the GT world championship at the very end is both such a huge difficulty spike and time sink, being 3-4 hours long for a single attempt with insane competition that I really got kinda sour by the end of the playthrough. Getting the REALLY good cars to breeze through the GT world championships involves winning the endurance races, and those can take up to 24 hours of real time to complete, and considering the fact I barely had time to attempt the 3-4 hour GT world championship, I REALLY didn't have time to get the best cars to smoke the competition. You could say that problem is def a skill issue from relying too much on better cars and parts over driver skill to win (and it certainly is, I suck at GT), but I think it's lame that the game lets you get away with that strat for everything BUT the one event I really didn't wanna get stuck in.
So yea. sorry for the long review, this is a game with a lot of things in it and as such I had a lot to say. It's honestly a masterpiece of the racing genre with so much care, attention to detail, and CONTENT put into it. I didn't even mention things like the B-spec mode where you can train an AI to race events for you, or the photo mode that allows you to render extremely high res (for the time) photos of your cars to a USB drive. It's one of those games that I'd absolutely consider for a "desert island" pick, for sure. But I still think that GT2s campaign pacing and flow was more engaging than this. Regardless, if you are even SLIGHTLY a fan of cars, racing games, the PS2, or just driving in general, you HAVE to give this game a go.
Firstly, the good. They basically took GT3 and gave it a simulation mode that puts it more in-line with the insane sim mode in GT2. There's the same "do events, earn new cars that give you access to new events" loop that made GT2 so engaging, and there's things like used car dealerships to get rid of the credit-grind slog that was GT3's campaign. There are over 700 cars to collect across all sorts of events. Circuit tracks, city tracks, one-make manufacturer events, specific car type events, rally events, endurance events, you name it and it's here with an insane amount of polish. The driving in this game is the best that the series has been up to this point, with it having that nice realistic feel to it. I am no real life race car driver so I can't actually comment on how ACTUALLY real it is, but it certainly has a good feel to it. The UI and soundtrack are as fantastic as always (though I still found the licensed race music kinda eh but I think that's just how things are gonna be), and visually this is one of the best looking games on the PS2 with an insane amount of visual polish, and even support for progressive scan and a mode that uses some interlaced shenanigans to get a high-res mode of 576x960!!! Considering the power of the PS2 the fact that they can get something like that working at all is incredible, much less running as good as it does with the visuals that it has. In terms of technical mastery, gameplay polish, and stylish UI, this is the GT PS2 magnum opus.
But unfortunately, there are still quite a bit of qualms that I have had with this game in my entire playthrough. While I do have a decent enough PS2 wheel that I can use with this game, I really don't prefer to play with a racing wheel over a pad and I don't have a good place to even set up the wheel anyways so I was kinda screwed on the control front. The game uses the pressure-sensitive buttons on the PS2 controller and it's not able to ever be turned off, and I find the dualshock 2's pressure sensitivity to be a bit too mushy to be used as precisely as needed for a type of racing game like this. I played the first half of the game using a very cobbled-together wheel setup that shook when literally any FFB happened, before eventually giving up to use a controller with the steering bound to the left stick and accelerator bound to the right. Neither control scheme was really elegant for me. If this game supported the neGcon (which it very well could have), then this would all be a non-issue and it would absolutely elevate this game to an 11/10 status, but some things are just not meant to be. The high-resolution mode is also more of a gimmick than anything, as my upscaler didn't really like how it tried to display the image, my cables are too crummy to get the best out of it, and the menus and UI all run at 480i anyways so I honestly stuck to the default resolution the whole game as well. Lastly, my final issue with the game comes from its pacing. While the core racing structure of GT2 is back in this game, it doesn't feel nearly as well-paced when it comes to what agency the game gives through prize cars. A lot of events end up giving you a prize car that can't really be used anywhere else, leading to a lot of "dead end" moments, where I just kinda had to sell the car for credits to get the cars that I did need, or just ignored them altogether. Since earning certain things is locked to overall completion percentage, I found the best thing to do was just to do the rally events as they offered the highest payouts alongside cars that I could actually use in a multitude of events. Playing that way just meant I spent most of my time doing a bunch of really slippery rally events, when I'm honestly more of a fan of the street/circuit racing... And then the GT world championship at the very end is both such a huge difficulty spike and time sink, being 3-4 hours long for a single attempt with insane competition that I really got kinda sour by the end of the playthrough. Getting the REALLY good cars to breeze through the GT world championships involves winning the endurance races, and those can take up to 24 hours of real time to complete, and considering the fact I barely had time to attempt the 3-4 hour GT world championship, I REALLY didn't have time to get the best cars to smoke the competition. You could say that problem is def a skill issue from relying too much on better cars and parts over driver skill to win (and it certainly is, I suck at GT), but I think it's lame that the game lets you get away with that strat for everything BUT the one event I really didn't wanna get stuck in.
So yea. sorry for the long review, this is a game with a lot of things in it and as such I had a lot to say. It's honestly a masterpiece of the racing genre with so much care, attention to detail, and CONTENT put into it. I didn't even mention things like the B-spec mode where you can train an AI to race events for you, or the photo mode that allows you to render extremely high res (for the time) photos of your cars to a USB drive. It's one of those games that I'd absolutely consider for a "desert island" pick, for sure. But I still think that GT2s campaign pacing and flow was more engaging than this. Regardless, if you are even SLIGHTLY a fan of cars, racing games, the PS2, or just driving in general, you HAVE to give this game a go.
2005
I think this is the console version of pac-man arrangement that they ported to namco museum virtual arcade on the 360? There are too many damn games called "pac-man arrangement", it's a mess. I do recall it being an overall solid maze game, doesn't do anything crazy memorable like adventures in time does but also isn't lazy like quest for the golden maze. There's like a linear world of levels that each have their own gimmicks and there's even some boss fights thrown in there. I do remember the elevator levels being kinda annoying tho. If you like maze-based pac man games, you are prob gonna have a solid time here, the whole game is like an hour long and maze games are pretty hard to mess up so like yeah
2013
please nintendo i beg you on my hands and knees to make a new wave race game so i don't have to play garbage like this in a sad vain attempt to feed the long-empty husk that is my desire to play water racing games. Everything is kusoge and low-budget as fuck (in a shovelwarey sense, not an awesome one), theres money grinding to pad the game out, and the whole thing just feels soulless. At least the 3D effect is decent and the soundtrack is pretty good, so it's not all terrible. "The wave race at home" doesn't even do this justice. It's like the wave race game that the wave race at home has in its own bootleggy home.