#388 R4: Ridge Racer Type 4

Posted: 29th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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886th played so far

Genre: Driving
Platform: Playstation 1
Year of Release: 1998
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco

The Ridge Racer series naming convention really gets confusing – aside from there being a second Ridge Racer with the same name on the list, this seems like the fourth one – although I keep forgetting it’s part of the franchise as the name is buried in the title.

With this being a Playstation 1 era game, you just know that this was taking the sprite based racer into a new 3D dimension. These days that just feels dated – while it would have worked for me, we’ll see why it’s still notable now.

Our Thoughts

While I wouldn’t call this a story heavy racing game, it is interesting to see that it at least seems to have a bit more than most. You chose between four teams at the start and while they have some statistical differences, they also have different storyline bits before each race – a short introduction that, in my case, set up the story of a woman who bought her own racing team but needs you to win so she can make her money back and be successful. It’s a nice little addition, something that makes it feel like something that’s not just an arcade racer.

Then there are the tracks themselves. They were decent, especially for the Playstation 1 era. The tracks needed to be learned anyway, but it feels odd now that we’re still dealing with limited chances at a race. We’re dealing with a home console now, retries of races should be fine. One place where this really showed for me, for example, is in the second level. It was set at sunset, which obviously looked nice and made for something different, it really got too dark to keep playing the game. Sure, we’ve struggled with this here before, but it seems unnecessary here. You can’t learn the track as easily, so this gets in the way.

Final Thoughts

This Ridge Racer sequel does step up the quality, but it still has its unnecessary arcade qualities. It was fun, sure, but still didn’t quite work for me.

#791 John Woo Presents Stranglehold

Posted: 25th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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885th played so far

Genre: Action/Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: PC/Playstation 3/Xbox 360
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Midway Chicago/Tiger Hill Entertainment
Publisher: Midway Games

I’ve managed to do some different preparation for this one – knowing I had a game with John Woo’s name on it, we watched his most known film, The Killer, a while ago. The heavy violence feels like it suits a video game and the Hong Kong setting feels distinct and interesting enough to make use of… I do still need to play Sleeping Dogs after visiting the city back in November. I’m as ready for this shooter as I’ll ever be.

Our Thoughts

One of the first things in my notes is that this feels like John Woo’s Cool Move Generator. It’s not the best shooter – without using the precision aim power, it feels really hard to aim and make it through. However, you get to constantly do cool moves – jumping over tables, shooting while sliding down wires and creating explosions everywhere. It really makes you feel good when you can get to it, but boring, if not frustrating, in between those moments.

The world is fairly linear – there are some goodies in short dead ends, but they didn’t feel that necessary. It’s all about fighting until you get exhausted, without as much plot other than explaining why there’s a boss you need to get rid of.

Finish a level and you get a score of the amount of damage you’ve caused to the world, in dollars, as well as a few other things (but who cares about how fast you are, right?). It unlocks some bonus materials. It’s not doing too much to force you to hit the goals, but works more as a nice pat on the back as you get through.

Final Thoughts

When you can get some cool moves in, John Woo Presents Stranglehold feels really good. Unfortunately, there are plenty of places where you don’t get those choices, especially in later levels when you leave the city. At that point the amount of enemies feels exhausting, without actually feeling interesting. You just keep going through until the end and I don’t think the end results are always worth it.

#844 Guitar Hero World Tour

Posted: 21st July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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884th played so far

Genre: Music
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Neversoft
Publisher: Activision

As I’m approaching the 900 mark – a big milestone that I’m still amazed I’m getting this close to – I’m getting to a lot of penultimates and this is one – for Guitar Hero: World Tour I’m going to get the guitar out we’ve been using since The Beatles: Rock Band and last had out in Guitar Hero: Metallica. This time the game isn’t branded with a band, but instead is a general game. It is, in fact, the fourth game in the series, just not numbered as such (but succeeded by Guitar Hero 5, which isn’t on our list).

Our Thoughts

Listen, trust me, I’ve played the game, but as it is the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series aren’t that different to describe. The gameplay is the same and while I can say the selection of songs is good, that new selection is the big draw and I’m not music literate enough to really describe that… trust me.

The main new feature are extended sustains, which looked like a nice addition and was an extra option in there. The art in the cut scenes are nice but, to be honest, with the story not being there – another “you’re a starting rock star, make it in your career” thing – there isn’t much to it. That’s not the point of it anyway. You want to play your guitar with your friends and see how well you do. It still does that and the series stays great at it.

#833 Devil May Cry 4

Posted: 17th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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883rd played so far

Genre: Action/Fighting
Platform: Playstation 3/Xbox 360/PC
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

So we’ve played the first and third Devil May Cry games before – the latter’s start in a store or (according to my four year old memory) pizza place standing out as an odd place to start. Beyond that, they’re the type of action battlers whose formula I’ve seen and enjoyed – again, Bayonetta draws so much from the same setting.

We’re playing the final game in the series that shows up on the list today, with the games after that being questionable in the fan community anyway – so I guess it’s good we end it here (even if the games had been out by the time this game was released).

Our Thoughts

I have to say that the Devil May Cry 4 intro/tutorial is one of the better that I think I’ve seen in this genre. On one hand, it’s a cinematic sequence of Nero, the game’s initial protagonist, fighting Dante, the main character of the series, in a large cathedral where Dante just murdered someone. On the other, it’s a tutorial that succinctlyย  summarizes the different moves available to you during battle, gives you a chance to practice them and keeps them in their context. And then it sets up Nero as a contrast with Dante, hot headed, obnoxious and clearly unpolished. It’s a strong start in a way other games in the series don’t have.

The combat keeps feeling good like that, solid, with taking out large chunks of enemies working especially well. It looks like you can later play through the levels with other enemies – that feels like something that will create some nice variety. Still, you always feel powerful without overpowered, most single enemies not being as much as a threat as the sum of them is. The world itself is not as amazing. Like other games – God of War comes to a mind as I recently played Chains of Olympus – it’s mostly linear levels that lead you from fight to fight, without many diversions. Even when you get to a building you get to explore, it’s still fairly linear in your limits on where you can go each time. It really is just a vehicle to get from plot beat to plot beat and fight to fight. There are some semi-platformy/jumping puzzles – using RB+B to latch on and jump across places – that feel like it should be good, but I’ve found them go against me frequently, especially when ceiling spikes got introduced – I couldn’t find a consistent hold on point and really couldn’t get through the way I wanted.

Final Thoughts

It feels like Devil May Cry 4 provides a lot of what the series is known for – big fights and set pieces with some dramatic plots. It adds more replayability from the extra characters and added to that, seems to have several places in each level that you can’t get to until you get additional abilities. I would need to get past battle exhaustion – I just don’t find them as interesting – but there’s something here to play more with.

#725 Test Drive Unlimited

Posted: 13th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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882nd played so far

Genre: Racing
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 2006
Developer: Eden Games
Publisher: Atari

Test Drive Unlimited is described as an open world racing game, similar to Burnout Paradise, but set in what the book calls the perfect location: Hawaii. We’ll fly over, find an apartment, go out and race.

Our Thoughts

There is something interesting about an open world game set in a familiar location, in part because of the comparison of how it matches real life, but also, I think, in the way it creates odd designs organically – a road is there because of historic reasons, not because it was designed for it. It doesn’t necessarily lead to ramps or stunts like I sometimes saw in, for example, Fuel, no, it’s there to let you get to some houses. I’m not sure to what extent this applies to the Hawaii of Test Drive Unlimited, but there were some random roads and bypasses where it was hard to ignore that it was awkward for that reason. I’m sure things have been optimized and smoothed over, but you’re not in a game world as much.

Even the start feels a bit more real, even if it’s devoid of much story. You actually land at the airport and have to lease a car before driving to buy a place to stay and getting your own first car. Even that early on, it becomes clear there are loads of things to purchase – loads of cars, some seventy houses, plenty of dress up options and all the usual upgrades. It feels quite big from the start and at least the game starts off easy enough. The first unlocked challenges are straight forward enough to beat and I didn’t struggle much to get up a rank. It does start to ramp up more quickly as it went on, but I felt I had a decent enough chance for a while.

There’s a decent variety of races, with most of the proper races being traffic free, at least early on – something that was quite nice as a beginner to make it through, as later, less formal races with traffic become more frustrating. Then there’s the model driving, which feels sleazy with the way you are clearly trying to pick them up. It was fairly uncomfortable and felt a bit unnecessary, a choice I wouldn’t expect now and I skipped the missions after trying one. There’s plenty of other options anyway, between time trials, races, minimum speeds and speed traps and more.

Final Thoughts

Test Drive Unlimited genuinely feels huge, with loads of options from the start and more that unlock later. There are loads of races and challenges, and there were even more available online or to share with friends, which could have been as interesting. There are some dodgy parts though, and some very difficult challenges, but this had its moments for sure.

#590 Far Cry

Posted: 9th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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881st played so far

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Crytek
Publisher: Ubisoft

I’ve really played this series out of order. Sure, we played the second and third game in that order, but both have their own quirks developed after this game. Far Cry 2 is described by many as an open world oddity, not reflecting where the series went and an interesting faction and mission system. Far Cry 3 is a true Ubisoft open world game, following the same course as the Assassin’s Creed series after the first and others – a big open world with loads of side activities and some set up that lets you unlock/earn the map step by step.

Far Cry, the first game, predates both of these developments, although its engine became the basic of everything Ubisoft after that. I’ve been looking forward to playing it and seeing where all of this goes.

Our Thoughts

It’s weird to play a game like this that has, as far as I can tell, no side activities. It’s a shooter in a big world, but rather than using that world for the many different situations, touches and small encounters other games like this seem to have, here it feels like you’re simply traveling from one point to another, while the world doesn’t really reward exploring. There’s nothing to discover and little to do other than taking on each mission. Yeah, it looks good in places, but in the end it’s hard to shake that feeling of it just being filler, sometimes with some enemies mixed in, but mostly something to drive through.

The missions are a lot more interesting, of course, and it feels like you get a lot of avenues to finish the missions – using stealth to travel in through various routes, taking enemies out one by one or a frontal assault, while for one I holed up in an observation tower and used sniper rifles to take them all out. It’s not as diverse when taking on a massive beached ship, where there are a few alternate routes, but mostly you go down one path, taking out enemies as you go. This is, of course, also one of the less interesting parts of the game as I played it, and even the arena fight at the end feels a bit standard.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that this game is a step towards what the Far Cry series would become, but that it’s not that yet. It’s a lovely world to explore, with some good set pieces and taking down camps that work. At the same time, it still feels more level based than the big world seems to imply – the stepping stone aspect being as interesting on the game as anything else.

#654 Gunstar Super Heroes

Posted: 5th July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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880th played so far

Genre: Shoot ‘Em Up
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Year of Release: 2005
Developer: Treasure
Publisher: Sega/THQ

So we played Gunstar Heroes as game… oh, 140 on the blog, some 740 games and at least seven and a half years ago. It actually still have some purple text in its write up! Now I’ll be honest and say that at this point, it has merged in my memory with plenty of other run and gunners, so I won’t try to draw out too many comparisons at this point. I have played a lot more Treasure games since though, with at least two more on the way (one of which I can now promise to have appear within ten games of this write up), and while Stretch Panic is an exception, games like Sin and Punishment still are in the similar area.

Just as there are over seven years between me playing the original game and this sequel, the two games were published twelve years apart and just as my writing hasn’t gotten much better in the intervening years, it feels like this sequel hews close enough to the original already. If nothing else, I’d expect that much from a sequel like this and how it’d build on nostalgia. A weird thing to say considering this game is now fifteen years old, but that’d what we get from this blog going on for this long.

Our Thoughts

To take out the initial concern I had, this game doesn’t shower you with choice, instead just offering you the choice between two playable characters, Red and Blue. They both have different weapon sets – nothing overly different, but just enough to make Blue feel a bit more controlled and Red a bit more reckless. You take each through the same levels, although the path of each character seems to be tracked separately in the save game – I think it’s just a convenience, with no differences otherwise.

Otherwise, this is another show that takes you through a long level, infiltrating a base, killing loads of enemies and going back out, or shooting others while you’re on top of a plane. It’s confident enough in this that it doesn’t give much of an introduction on what to do – I guess the manual would have said more about the controls – and the story introduction feels as generic as can be. This extends to the the bosses, were nothing is telegraphed and I felt confused on what to do to beat them – and quite surprised when they suddenly appeared. I felt lost playing the game, which wasn’t great. The story itself, aside from being generic, lost some of the humour we enjoyed in the original storyline.

Final Thoughts

At this point, I must admit I struggle to see what this game offers over the original. Yeah, it’s a decent shooter, doing all the standard run and gun stuff, but there’s nothing here that I’m feeling in it. I guess this clearly wasn’t for me, but perhaps the same thing happened a bit too often here.

#838 God of War: Chains of Olympus

Posted: 1st July 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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879th played so far

Genre: Adventure/Fighting
Platform: Playstation Portable
Year of Release: 2008
Developer: Ready at Dawn
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

There’s still something amazing in my mind about some of the God of War fights – big and impressive at its best, although possibly not always as good in tying them together, from what I remember of the connecting corridors.

I don’t know whether all of this transfers as well to a handheld – not that I won’t be able to play it (the PSP doesn’t lack many controls that a PS2 or PS3 controller does have) but that the smaller screen may not work as well with the big set pieces that are normally the highlight of the series. I have to see how it transfers and whether it stays engaging.

Our Thoughts

Something felt off about the way Chains of Olympus played. There’s something that felt off about the timing in the game – as if there’s display lag stopping you from getting the QTEs right (like we had in PaRappa the Rapper), while with a handheld you shouldn’t have a problem with that. Instead, I guess it’s just an odd input thing that hindered gameplay a bit. I had a similar issue with jumping – at one point, jumping towards a platform to get some goodies forced you to the right platform, but I couldn’t ever manage to jump back, to the point where I always died. It was pretty awkward, made worse by a bunch of invisible barriers in the wrong places. It felt like the game missed some polish here, unfortunately.

Now, the story bits we saw were interesting, in the way most of God of War is. It’s the combat that matters though, with the game feeling as good there as ever. I haven’t seen all the powers yet – the game spreads them out quite well – but they’ve been quite good for the point I got to. Added to that, the combat abilities are used outside of combat to solve some puzzles, such as using parrying to mirror things, which is a neat touch as well. On the whole, when the controls work, the game flows as well as always.

Final Thoughts

Like so many handheld versions of game, it feels like God of War: Chains of Olympus imitates the original games quite well, but doesn’t quite get there. It has the feel of the battles, the big enemies, the stories and even the semi-linear corridors with some side paths for goodies. The controls don’t always live up to it though, including the QTEs, and that’s unfortunate as it means it doesn’t all tie together in the end.

#134 Dungeon Master

Posted: 27th June 2020 by Jeroen in Goodbye
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878th played so far

Genre: Role-Playing
Platform: Various
Year of Release: 1987
Developer: FTL Games
Publisher: FTL Games

A long time ago, when I first got access to the internet, I had learned about a (table top) game called Dungeons & Dragons and that it was a Dungeon Master who ran it. While I’d go on to play games using the system later, with Baldur’s Gate and Planescape Torment being my big ones and Eye of the Beholder being an earlier list implementation, I thought that this game, too, was related to it. I never played much of it – the start isn’t that easy to figure out – I’ve always had that curiosity. Today, I get to satisfy that, at least to some point.

Our Thoughts

Dungeon Master is a step up from the dungeon crawlers that we’ve seen in Ultima, with better graphics and a more evolved character system – including a party to play with. It’s not as far as the aforementioned Eye of the Beholder, but there’s a bit more variation. Just how the game starts, in a simple sewer-like level with portraits on the wall that let you select the different characters you play with, stands out. While the characters still stay a number of stats without much personality, there’s a name and portrait here that add a bit of personality to the game.

After that, it feels like a pretty standard dungeon crawl. It is initially a case of finding keys to progress through the dungeon levels while fighting off enemies. There are some puzzles involved as well – the true original D&D spirit – but while the later levels seem to have some of their own characterization, as well as specific set up, it’s all down to puzzles, fighting monsters and dealing with keys (sometimes between levels) and the scope for role playing or story seems more limited from what I can see. One advantage I had over players at the time is that annotated maps for these levels is now online, saving me the pixel hunt for that key that blends in too well and letting me see a bit more.

Final Thoughts

While it feels like Dungeon Master is dated compared to what RPGs become, even a few years later in Eye of the Beholder, the core of what you’d get in a 70s hardcore D&D game is there, indeed with a sadistic dungeon master. It’s opaque and tricky, but I can see the diamond underneath of a game that I’d like to see more of.

#409 Front Mission 3

Posted: 23rd June 2020 by Jeroen in Games
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877th played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Playstation 1
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Square Product Development Division 6
Publisher: Square

I’ve been looking forward to playing Front Mission 3 – at its core a tactics game like Final Fantasy Tactics, but with mechs and all that. It also seems appropriately story dense and in my prep I’ve seen that there’s a split in the storyline early on. It feels completely up my ally and if anything, I’ll need more time with the game in the future. We’ll see whether I do keep going, but let’s get started.

Our Thoughts

Front Mission 3 challenges you from the start. While the tutorial obviously is straight forward enough, a few missions in I felt the squeeze and battles early on felt like a puzzle to solve where I didn’t know all the pieces I needed to put together. I used a guide to help me out, with a lot of it telling me to stay put. It seems best to play defensively, letting the opponents wade into battle as you ambush them and use counter fire to weaken them. It took some going, but I got there after a while.

It’s a system that’s made more interesting – if less predictable – by the more complex damage system. Damage is modelled not just for different parts of the mechs – arms, legs and so on, limiting your actions appropriately – but also for its pilot. This allows the pilot to jump between mechs if needed, giving you some more options to continue the battle for them as you need to. Add to that the mech customization, at the appropriate times, that makes them even more individual, and it takes the complexity of the battles up by a fair amount. It’s an interesting system, although I felt overwhelmed soon enough.

The story in the mean time is quite interesting in how it’s told. There are two strands, with your protagonist either following his friend or his sister based on a decision early on. It doesn’t get sign posted – I didn’t know I was locked in until a while after – but it certainly seemed interesting. I’d like to see more of the other path – perhaps it would have been easier with less back-to-back battles – and that’s for a future playthrough. At the same time, even at this point I got a feel for the story. There is a big internet-type network implemented in the game with news articles, websites for various organizations you encounter and other names. It helps with the plot a few times, but mostly is a lot of background information that’s a lot of fun to dive into as well.

Final Thoughts

Front Mission 3‘s storyline is an interesting one to explore, one that you obviously can’t do in a single playthrough by design. That’s combined with a tactical game that has a lot of depth, even more with the extensive customization included in the game. I need a guide to deal with it right now, but there’s a lot more here to discover.

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