And thus... Game #1000 approaches!

  Picking a game worthy of being #1000 was hard! I went through every game in my backlog and none was good enough, not one of them had enough emotional investment or expectations from me. In the end I singled out both God of War(2018) and Heart of Darkness, but... I didn't really have ALL that much hype for GoW, I simply heard it was a great game, while Heart of Darkness was part of my childhood.

 I also considered replaying an older game I loved. No More Heroes was high on that list, but Limited Run Games will be shipping their release soon, so why replay the Wii version which I've already played countless times? So how about Killer7? Maybe Shadows of the Damned? Sounded attractive, but I preferred taking something out of my backlog.

 ...out of ideas, considering I'm probably not gonna get an Octoberween Horror Game Extravaganza, since I'll be busy with my uni's final project, I went through my horror game backlog and I found it. The perfect game. One of my favorite games of all time, the game that made me reconsider my stance on Survival Horror games, albeit on a different console than the one I had played it on.

 Game #1000 will be...

 Resident Evil 4! I don't remember why I purchased this game on Wii, maybe I had money to burn and nothing to spend it on, but it was love at first play. Afterwards I decided to play more survival horror games and turns out my past self was wrong and I actually liked the genre! I'm sure the Wii version is much superior, thanks to better graphics and controls, but hey, I've played the rest of the series on Playstation joysticks, it should work well!

Game #998: Metro Exodus

  A future in which you need to wear a mask to go outside. Topical. Appropriate.

 While I'm a newcomer to the Metro series, the Switch re-release won me over so I got Metro Exodus as fast as I could... even if I'm only got around to playing it now. Reception of Exodus was mixed to say the least, it changes gameplay a lot to focus more on open world explorations, as well as the disastrous limited exclusivity deal that it got on Epic's gamestore on the PC front. However.. I liked it a whole lot.

 Some years after the previous game, Artyom finds himself as part of the Spartans, and he and his wife quickly find out that there's human life living in the radioactive surface of the planet. Hijacking a train, he, Anna, and a small Spartan platoon set off on the Aurora, the train, to find a safe place on earth. Needless to say, most of the game takes place outside the Metro, which is certainly different... but I think they pulled it off very well. The game follows a formula, every one or two chapters you get an intermission chapter that takes place entirely on the train. This intermissions are fantastic for fleshing out the characters, as they have a TON to say... if you let them. Artyom and Ana are one of the most disgustingly cute couples in gaming by far. All that said, I think keeping Artyom as a silent protagonist was a missed opportunity, as some of the dialogue can feel downright awkward since characters just unnaturally vomit dialogue all over you. Sure, they make some cheeky references to Artyom's silence, but it would still be better if he had a voice and actually interacted with the rest of the characters. In other words, I think the world-building is fantastic despite having a silent protagonist. It's great, but it could be even better. As you advance through the story, some of your teammates can die, and there will be dialogue to reflect this, some characters may even be explored post-death, like Duke, who I happened to lose in my adventures, thus Anna will be saddened about it and tell you about when they were younger and how he looked up to Artyom. Dammit, game, makin' me sad about getting an ally killed!

 Having such a strong story element was pretty welcome in my case, but I'm also OK with changing how the game plays. Bullets as currency is a thing of the past, all your weapons and bullets are either crafted or salvaged from enemy corpses. The survival element is still strong in here, as even the default difficulty setting can be quite brutal, and you'll quickly learn that running away from mutants is the name of the game here. The sneaky approach has never been so enticing before! Being silent and non-lethal is more important than ever, as that's the only way you'll manage to keep your squadmates alive, and in turn, the only way to get the good ending. While the surface is not AS radioactive as the characters thought, you'll still need to use your gas mask every now and then since there are radioactive areas. So most survival elements are kept intact, from low ammunition, that you can craft if need be, to having to micromanage your electricity charges, the state of your guns, as they may get stuck if you use them too much, needing to craft filters for your mask and needing to take care of it not breaking during fights as well as the lack of medikits, once again, forcing you to craft them. I felt fairly oppressed on the default difficulty setting, so in a way, the survival element is here, heck, I'd say I found this game harder than the previous two Metro games, keeping in mind I played the Redux versions which I think rebalanced this aspect.

 If the game gets too hard, thankfully, the game offers a Journalist difficulty mode, and you can lower the difficulty setting at any time. I didn't mind the difficulty at first but in the end I caved in while fighting the Baron, I had retried that segment like 20 times and... the game has very lengthy loading times. I was spending more time in the loading screen than actually playing the game, so I said 'Screw it, we gettin' outta here one way or another'. So yeah, a challenging game I can deal with, but having to sit through such lengthy loading screens for every attempt isn't my idea of fun.

 On the other hand, I think the open world works very well. The lengthy loading times are there so that there's little to no loading as you play through each massive area. Every chapter that isn't an intermission takes place in its own area, and these areas have multiple optional objectives. So, if you don't care about the possibility of finding better equipment or increasing your moral points, for the good ending, you can just skip the optional markers on your map. As far as I'm concerned, the game was fun, the environments were pretty, so I did every little bit of questing I could. The one issue I had is that sometimes it can be hard to figure out where to go, as some areas are blocked off by arbitrary invisible walls. Will Artyom climb that rock? Maybe. Maybe he won't. You could try four times and maybe one of those he'll climb up, or maybe he won't because there's an invisible wall. It's not too bad, but sometimes I felt smart about thinking I found a route only to discover an invisible wall wouldn't let me climb over!

 If anything, I've felt quite disappointed over how PS4 games looked, because the jump from PS3 to PS4 wasn't very pronounced. I think Metro Exodus is the best looking game I have played on PS4, it looks amazing. From the character models, to the very detailed environments you explore, everything looks amazing. There are a ton of graphical bugs, including a truck that had invisible parts that made me chuckle a bit, but overall, it's amazing. No wonder the game opens up with enemies grappling to take a bite out of your face, the developers were showing off!

 Lastly, I love how the game will make you feel really bad about not taking the stealthy approach, with characters berating you for not being able to avoid bloodshed. Not to mention that, if you fail to take the nonlethal approach, a squadmate will die and now the rest of the characters will be super sad about it. Heck, at one point, the colonel, Miller, Ann's father, looked directly at me after reminiscing about Duke, as if "Hey, player, you let him die, shame on you!". That said, whenever you do manage to take the nonlethal approach you'll get praised, and since I wound up liking the characters so much... just having them survive is a reward in and of itself. And the ending? It's the perfect emotional sendoff for the series, the music, the intensity, your allies... it's just perfect.

 So I know that Exodus is fairly divisive due to the many changes to how the previous games worked... but in my case, everything felt like it clicked. The new approach, with intermissions built around character development, I feel works really well. The way they approached open world gameplay, having about 5 different self-contained areas worked well given the context of the plot. My one caveat are the loading times, which turn a hard but rewarding game into a frustrating one, but after I lowered the difficulty and my attempts went down the frustration went down and the game only got better. You can fight me on this, but I think this is my favorite Metro game.

 8.5

Game #997: Whirl Tour

  Guess I'm gonna take this one for a... whirl.

 I don't know what I expected when I purchased Whirl Tour, but I do know that it somewhat met what I expected when I first popped the disc in: A Tony Hawk clone. But boring.

 Yeah, it's Tony Hawk but on Scooters and with the lamest cast of characters you could imagine, the hero is actually named "Wasa B." which I'm sure wouldn't fly by today's standards. The said, every character has a decent assortment of costumes, which was an unexpected extra. The game has 8 different levels, 7 of them have the same sort of goals: X amount of points, defeat two bosses, destroy the generator(Hidden behind the gate that beating both bosses unlock), perform X trick somewhere, destroy or do 5 or something, collect 3 music CDs. It's very formulaic, to say the least. On the other hand, every level unlocks a Race against a CPU enemy AND you can also get a different bonus per stage, and this are more varied, a mini-billiards stage in which you must push balls into holes, an arena in which you must defeat three bosses, etc.

 As for modes, there's Arcade and Story, which are basically identical, 3 minutes to complete goals, just like Tony Hawk, and Practice, which you'd guess it's like Free Skate, except it isn't, you have an arbitrary 30 minute limit. Lame. The soundtrack is pretty good though. I mean, my music taste is very punk, so most of these 'extreme sports' games tend to have soundtracks that appeal to my personal tastes, so I'm a bit biased!

 The game controls exactly like Tony Hawk, which is great for your muscle memory, but it feels super slow. Instead of a SPECIAL gauge you get a turbo gauge to use with L2. But still, when you compare this game to Tony Hawk it feels like it drags so slowly, to the point that the fun factor goes down. To stand out they actually give you a health gauge, and if you run out of health your run ends, your health goes down whenever you bail or get hit by a boss. Can't say I was a fan of this mechanic. This game has no analogue to Tony Hawk's revert, which hurts combo potential. Bosses are fairly easy, although to be fair some have unique attacks, such as shockwaves you must jump, and in order to hurt them you simply need to jump and do a trick on them. Early bosses are super easy, but by the end of the game they take an enormous amount of punishment before they go down. Luckily, stages have power ups spread throughout, some make your next jump by higher, others heal you, which are a godsend.

 Whirl Tour is acceptable, it sticks to Tony Hawk's formula, a proven formula that works well, but it lacks its pizzazz and attitude, so it ends up feeling like a feeble charade of that series. There's nothing broken about it, everything works like it should, but I feel like there are slightly better alternatives, like Aggressive Inline, or, well, you could go for the much better alternatives, a proper Tony Hawk game.

 5.5

Game #996: Dungeon Siege - Throne of Agony

  Of agony of agony, 'member that one?

 What is Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony and why does it exist? No, really, before its release Dungeon Siege was a PC-exclusive franchise, and both initial games are part of my all-time favorite games ever, so why release this game out of the blue on the PSP of all systems? It makes no sense! On the other hand, this game continued what DS2 started by Diablo-ificating itself even further, working as the perfect bridge between DS2 and DS3.

 Dungeon Siege being a franchise very close to my heart meant that I had some sort of expectations out of this game. The fact that it released on the PSP because reasons also meant I had a few slightly more negative expectations. In the end, it delivered a bit on both fronts!

 The series has always played like dungeon crawling looters, you go into dungeons, kill tons of baddies and get tons of loot to customize your character with. Every piece of equipment reflects on your character, and they kept that in here, so you can always look forward to how your new equipment will look. Skills weren't a thing until DS2, but in this game you'll constantly get new skills, both passive and active, as you level up, and you get three skill points to increase their levels. This addition is very welcome. You can equip up to six different active skills, one one the O button, one on the Triangle button and another four by holding down R and pressing any face button. It works really well to be honest.

 Dungeon Siege always stood out from other dungeon crawlers by the way in which you developed your character, if you fought with melee weapons, stats associated to that would increase, use a bow and those skills would increase, so you could develop your character in any way that you wanted. It was brilliant. This game follows the Diablo formula, you must pick a class and you're stuck with it. Dungeon Siege always had character creators... until now. Wanna be a Warrior? You'll have to play as the ugly semi-giant. Wanna be the rogue? Stuck with a blue-skinned female. You're into magic? White guy it is. If this was any other game I wouldn't have cared too much, but this is Dungeon Siege! Create your OWN character, develop him your own way! Huge step back, very limiting. At least you get three stat points to spend on leveling up, so that's something. I gave DS3 more credit because at least the pre-defined characters had more personality and styles to mess around with.

 Another thing that made Dungeon Siege what it was was the fact that you micro-managed an 8-man team(6 in the sequel), but here... all you get is a single AI ally that is dumb as a sack of rocks and will get itself killed. Melee followers are a waste of time, and if you try to keep them alive they'll only waste your potions since the potion button makes both you and your follower chug down a bottle, even if you don't need it. Ranged followers will sometimes watch you fight while doing nothing, while other times will walk in front of the enemy because why not. They are useless.

 The gameplay is as addictive as any other Dungeon Crawler is, that said, I feel like the camera is TOO zoomed in. The fact that I played as the caricaturesque semi-giant probably didn't help. So you'll have to rely on the mini-map a lot. The framerate tries it hardest, only had bad slowdown a few times, but nothing to worry about. Not that you'll ever face the huge waves of enemies you did on the PC games. That said, sometimes your attacks will just miss even though the animation overlaps the enemy. In those cases, the enemy won't even be triggered to fight, but it's dumb, so you'll end up using an active skill to damage them.        

 The game is prone to crashing, a lot. I had like 8 different crashes while loading zones, so save and save often. Other people reported crashes when having the Stone Golem as an active follower. I read some people suggesting turning off the PSP Cache, but by the time I did it I was near the end of the game. Here's the wildest part, throughout the first fourth of the game I had a ton of crashes.... but the next two fourths were crash free, it was super weird.... and I got confident, I must've gone through approximately 10 hours straight without a single crash and then... it crashed one final time. Regardless, it's super annoying and the game has no auto-save, so I just saved the game any time I was gonna exit or enter a zone, just to cover my bases.

 The last thing I'll mention is how poorly designed, or explained, the 'find the settlers' mission is. I found the settlers but they wouldn't follow me. "I know! I'll use a portal next to them" and nothing. I read a guide and it mentioned a portal gem, but I had no portal gem. So I did some research and other people came upon the same bug! We had no portal gem. The settlers wouldn't react! Here's the thing, the settlers you are likely to find first are part of the NEXT quest, these other settlers are hidden further away, along the coast of the overworld.... This stumped me for HOURS, and I was not the only one. The second batch of settlers shouldn't even appear until after you trigger their sidequest.

 I wouldn't call Throne of Agony a total disappointment, I mean, I had played DSIII already so I already suffered from the series deviating from the formula that made it what it was. And the basic gameplay is fun, the way your skills work is decent, there are some very nostalgic songs from the original game(THE THEME SONG IS HERE, BABY!) and I love the fact that equipment reflects on your character. That said, all the crashing did put me off a bit, as the scare of the game possibly crashing again always loomed, plus, some of the technical issues such as dumb ally AI or positioning to land attacks are hard not to notice. So yeah, it's not awful, but it's quite probably the last DS game I'd even pick to play again.

 5.5

Game #995: Rage

  What if Doom and Borderlands had a child?

 I'll be completely honest, I never cared about Rage until the sequel came out and its 90's Hokuto no Ken-like aesthetics won me over. Heck, I'm pretty sure I played a bit of this very same game at a friend's, as I could remember the boomerang.

 If I had to describe it, it'd be Borderlands without the cell-shading, RPG elements as well as a toned-down humor, with a little bit of Doom sparkled it. Heck, it even has the same issue as DOOM on PS4, in which unless you look at an object for like 2-seconds straight its textures won't load. On the flip side, the game runs at 60FPS and it has some fantastic character models, they're so good they'd feel right at home on a PS4 game. The game is set on a post-apocalyptic wasteland, like Mad Max's, and you'll also get to drive cars made out of junk across the desertic landscapes. And when you're not driving, you'll be exploring the dilapidated ruins of the world... and it looks really good, while making post-apocalyptic worlds isn't particularly tough, I feel like environments are very well designed and immersive.

 Speaking of driving... it's surprisingly fun. Borderlands has been at it for four games straight and it hasn't felt this good yet, so I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent more time than necessary partaking in optional races, in order to upgrade my wasteland vehicles! Don't get me wrong, it's not amazing or anything, but the driving works well enough. While the game is played in first person, driving is done in third person, which makes sense, at least to me, I never liked driving in first person.

 While there's a main storyline, the game is filled with sidequests. Sadly, since there's no XP or upgrades, outside the ones you can buy, they feel a bit useless. That said, bullets are a rare commodity, so the extra income or valuable trash you may find might help you stock up with money... assuming the sidequest wasn't too taxing on your stock! And to be fair, sometimes you'll get recipes to craft more items.

 The combat feels pretty nice, you get about 8 different weapons and can assign up to four to your weapon panel for quick access. Every weapons sans the BFG and the Sniper rifle even get alternate ammo types! I liked the combat, it feels pretty nice, although not as fast-paced at Doom, it's still pretty fun. That said, enemies become damage sponges by the end of the game if you ignore alternate ammo types. I decided to start purchasing alternate ammo way too late in the game, I kinda wish I had done that sooner! If I didn't like one thing is that headshots are basically useless unless you use alternate ammunition. That said, a headshot done with the shotgun feels SO good since the enemies' heads pop in a very satisfying brain-storm.

 To aid you, you can also equip up to four item types on your digital pad. And there are a lot of items, from basic bandages to heal you up quickly, since the game has regenerative health, to grenades, RC Bomb Cars, deployable sentries, as well as the game's centerpiece, the Wingstick, a boomerang that loves decapitating enemies.

 I think the game is a lot of fun, it has great first-person shooting and some decent driving mechanics. The world of Rage is very appealing too, from well designed wastelands to the very distinctive NPCs that give you missions or flavor dialogue. But there are two things in which it falters. Firstly, DLC. My copy was new and came with the code, a code I didn't bother redeeming, but spread through the wasteland are sewers. Even the game will tell you about them... so you walk towards one of them, try to enter and... Nope, the game tells you to buy the DLC. This is beyond egregious. When that happened it really put a sour taste in my mouth, very uncool. The fact that a code came inside the game's case proves that it was taken out of the game in order to sell it to players that bought the game used. Disgusting.

 The other issue is that the game ends on a whimper. So, it's time for the final mission, you get the BFG, which takes the form a very useful energy minigun. And throughout the level you try conserve ammo, since surely you'll need it to make mincemeat out of the final boss. Except that there's no final boss. All you get at the end of the game are a few waves of very easy enemies. And the ending? What ending? It lasts, what, 30 seconds? Thankfully, the story element was never the game's focus, and I feel like in this game the journey is what really mattered....

 I had a blast with Rage, it does so many things really well that it's easy to forgive most of its shortcomings. It's a shame the game came out when publishers were at its worst when it came to DLC practices Regardless, I liked this game so much... I think I'm interested in the sequel now.

 8.5

Game #994: Ridge Racer Unbounded

  Not my Ridge Racer.

 Last year, Ridge Racer quickly made itself a place in my heart, with simple but fun gameplay, and I had fun watching the series evolve. And then came Ridge Racer Unbounded, the entry that pretty much killed the series.

 Unbounded is not like other RR games, going for a more urban set-up. I think there's supposed to be some kind of story, but what matters is that the game is divided into 9 districts with about 7 events each. There's no offline multiplayer, which is absolutely idiotic, and the progression is very weird. After each event you are graded with up to three stars, and that usually unlocks new events, but you can also brute force your way through the game, as just completing a race nets you some XP. As you earn XP you also earn access to new cars. 

 This also means that there are no proper 'races', in Single Player all you get are the nine districts and all the events each one contains. No 'free racing' nor anything fun.  Adding to this... is that there's no way to change the difficulty setting. The game is brutal, the AI is relentless and cheats a lot, sometimes it feels like they charge their turbo way faster than humanly possible, and cars with low top-speed will just pass you by because screw you. I looked this up, and even people that liked the game admit that you will probably have to retry many stages. And that's the thing... Right now I don't have a ton of free time, and I sure as hell am not willing to spend that much time on a genre I don't even like all that much. I don't care about racing games, I don't care about 'gittin gud' at them, so I didn't even bother to finish the game because I got tired of making a single mistake that would cost me the entire race and force me to retry.

 And I'll give it this, the game is very pretty, but it's also very dark to point that sometimes it's very easy to crash against walls you thought were openings. Know what could've helped? A mini-map of the track to see where you are. On the flip-side, adding to the visual eye candy, the city is very destructible, which makes races very exciting.

 To add to this... there's no tutorial. I found some people saying that you must hold the drift button all the way through the curve, others that you should use the breaks and the accelerator WHILE holding down drift, others that you shouldn't... What worked for me was letting go off the accelerator and holding down the drift button for a little while and then pumping gas once I was ready to get out of the curve, but even then, I crashed a lot. In other words, it's hard to understand how this game should be played, and there's no in-game guide to help you. Good luck!

 While RR has always focused on drifting, this one is focused on destruction. Certain actions, such as destroying the city, drifting or tailing other racers fill your POWER gauge, once full you get a turbo. If you catch an enemy from behind while turboing you'll wreck them. You can also use it to open up "shortcuts", except that they are barely shortcuts and are mostly just to let you chain POWER. It's fun seeing you destroy walls and what not, but the fact that they don't feel very useful makes them lose their fun quickly. Touching back on the unfairness of the CPU, if you get wrecked you'll probably find yourself back quite a few positions, while it's not weird to see a CPU enemy you just destroyed pass you by after a few seconds. It's crazy.

 Ridge Racer Unbounded doesn't feel like any other game in the series, and it's also unapologetically tough, no tutorial, no explanation, no way to change the difficulty setting, it's just you and your skills, which admittedly, might be exactly what some people want. Not me, though. That said, I think the game looks pretty nice and races can be rather exciting thanks to how destructible everything is. Honestly, this game wasn't made for Ridge Racer fans, and it's missing both accessibility options as well as features(Multiplayer, Free Races) that made the other Ridge Racer off-shoot, R: Racing Evolution, palatable even if it wasn't your thing.

 5.5

Game #993: Assassin's Creed - Bloodlines

  I thought we were done with Altair...

 While AC: Brotherhood and AC: Revelations almost made me quit the franchise, it was the first AC that I liked the least, so I was the least bit excited about revisiting Altair's adventures in Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines. I'll tell ya this, the game brought back memories of how clunky the movement was in the first game, so I'd say that they managed to offer a very authentic portrayal of the original game!

 The game takes place shortly after the original AC, so Altair is in possession of the Apple of Eden, and now he is out to murder more Templars. Something I loved is that this game does away with the modern day segments, it's just you as Altair 100% of the time, the way Assassin's Creed should be. I'll die on this hill. Since the PSP is much weaker hardware than what was available of the time, they pared down the open world, so while you do get a sandbox to play around in, it's much smaller and divided into different sections separated by gates and loading times. It works well, although the game limits through which gates you can go depending on the chapter you are in, so it's not like you are completely free to do as you want. The game is fairly brief, for a change, taking about 6-7 hours to complete, and that's including the few sidequests you can complete.

 The controls take a bit of getting used to, kinda like the original game which it tries to ape. You hold R to run, and you hold R+X to enter parkour move as you move around. But you can't just climb over any and every surface, you walls to have edges or stones or something that Altair can cling onto. Holding down X helps you 'blend in' by imitating an old sage. You hold down L to make the face buttons move the camera around. There's no eagle vision, but you don't really need it, as the mini map shows you everything you need to see. Combat is alright-ish, you target enemies by pressing triangle, you have your basic attacks and counters and dodges. The combo system is very weird because it's timing-based, most enemies will block every single attack you land, but if you press the attack button right as your blade is deflected Altair will attack again, usually after 3 deflections you'll just murder the guy, even though they blocked all your attacks. Fighting multiple enemies is a bit of a chore because, once again, you use the triangle button to swap targets, and you can only counter the enemy you're targeting, as far as I could tell, so expect to get hit by plenty of cheap shots.

 The game is a simplified take on the original AC, but it works well on the console. I don't think I found myself bored at any time, and there's more mission variety than in said original game, if you can believe that. On the other hand, movement can be rough, which, in a way, is faithful to the original. Sometimes some roofs will just make you stop on your tracks because who knows why. Or Altair will move in a way you don't want to because he'll fail to make a jump he should have done because who knows why. Or you'll try to climb a roof only to fall as you get to the top because reasons. This game reminded me of how spotty AC 1 could be at times, even though Parkour was one of its key features, and made me appreciate how the series evolved it. Oh! And one time Altair went completely invisible when I tried to climb a tower. Had to kill myself to fix it.

 Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines is far from bad, and I think they did a great job at scaling it down for a handheld release. For a change, I had fun playing with Altair, and while controls and gameplay can be a bit rough, I'd say it's overall fun.

 6.5

Game #992: Urban Reign

  This game sure took a beating from critics...

 This year, for whatever reason, I decided that it was time to play all those sub-par PS2 beat'em ups, like Final Fight Streetwise and Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance. They didn't disappoint, Urban Reign, however was just as poorly received by critics... but turns out it's nothing sort of a gem in the rough. Heck, even Adam Sessler, who I used to like before he became unhinged, trashed the game.

 There are no two ifs or buts about it, if you don't like pummeling guys for hours on end... this is not your game. The game is made up of 100 exceptionally brief missions that should take a player about 2 hours to complete, and then you unlock Free Mode, in which you can replay missions with any character, and Challenge Mode which is a survival of sorts. There's also a multiplayer VS and, through cheat code, you can even play Free Mode and Story mode with a buddy. There are a gazillion different characters for you to unlock, including Paul Phoenix and Marshall Law from Tekken, donning their Tekken 5 looks.

 The story mode has barely any story. There's flavor text before each mission, but I won't lie, I didn't care one bit about it. Interestingly, as you complete stages you get stat points so that you can slowly develop your character. It also does a good job at easing you into the game, because you unlock new techniques, such as different super moves, running on walls, grappling enemies on the air, learning to fight with an AI partner AS you advance through the story mode. It's a shame you are forced to play as generic bald meat-head Brad Hawks, or however the hell he is called, but then again, most character designs try very hard to look gruff and tough. And then you unlock Paul Phoenix and his goofy 'do.

 What makes the game so special is how good the combat system is. You perform a basic combo by tapping circle, or you can target different body areas(Head, Torso, Legs) by holding Up, Down or Left/Right when you press circle. Different characters have different moves, some get single, powerful 'region' attacks, other get combos. Triangle is used to grapple, and once again, different directions hurt different areas. Hurting an 'area' makes the enemy take more damage, and once they are in the red, get dizzy from getting hit there. Square is used to dodge attacks, with the right timing, and if you press the right direction before getting hit you'll deflect the act with a strong counter. You can even deflect attacks mid-combo, provided you're not getting juggled that is.

 Juggles, we got them. Doing combos in the game is so much fun, and the animations look powerful and getting hit looks painful. For example, with Brad, you can do a Torso-combo to pop the enemy into the air and then try to kick them into a wall with Up+Circle. Or continue your juggle with a neutral circle attack. Or press triangle to perform a powerful grab while they are on the air. And as you deal damage you Special gauge fills, and you can use Triangle+Circle+Up/Down/Left or Right/Neutral for a very powerful special move. Special moves not only deal a ton of damage, they get very generous invincibility frames AND you can pull them off at ANY moment, even when getting hit, so there's a lot of strategy to be had on how you use your special attacks. All this depth and I didn't even get into fighting alongside a player or CPU ally, since you can even perform dual-grapple attacks. Man, there's some very stylish combos you can perform without even relying on the special dual-attack animations, something as cool as using Up+Circle with Brad to send your enemy flying, and while they are going through the air your CPU ally catches them in a combo of their own. Or you see your CPU buddy popping the enemy into the air so you rush in and perform an aerial attack. This game is AMAZING. And as with any beat'em up worth its salt, there are also weapons you can grab and use during battle, some characters even excel with weapons and should try to keep them.

 And that's not even getting into how good the game looks. Sure, the art direction is a bit uninspired, since just like Final Fight Streetwise and BeatDown: Fists of Vengeance, they tried TOO hard. Thaaaaaaat said, the overall graphical polish is top-notch because environments are highly destructible. It feels SO good to pound enemies against furniture and watch it crumple in their wake. And the framerate remains steady all the way through.

 The game's biggest sin is its camera, it's quite unwieldy. And it seems like it inverts if you're moving? Look, when fighting it won't bother you, it's only an issue when your CPU ally is out there fighting baddies out there and you need to find them to help them. Eventually I just gave up, and when I had to find something I just stood still, moved the camera and carried on.

 So here's the thing, the game's got depth for a beat'em up, but there's only so much you can do with a single attack button. It was good enough for me, and I think the animation and overall gameplay are fantastic, so much so that I didn't care about how uninspired the Story Mode was. And Story Mode does have you fighting tons of repeated dudes, even though the overall character roster is fairly decent... there are 100 missions, so you'll fight some characters more times than you can count. However, the engine allows the player to get a TON of mileage out of its very simple control scheme, and the animations and overall feeling of hitting and getting hit are deliciously painful. If you ask me, this is one of the PS2's most hidden gems.

 8.5

Game #991: Soul Calibur - Broken Destiny

 Mortal Kombat AND Soul Calibur? Kratos is out there linking worlds together!

 I took a potshot at Soul Calibur IV the other day, so why not give it another go? Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny is, basically, the PSP's own Soul Calibur IV, using its mechanics, character roster and designs on a smaller scale.

 On the transition to the PSP, Arcade Mode was lost, so no character endings, which was a bit disappointing. This game offers Quick Match, in which you select your opponent from a random assortment of custom characters. Lame. You can't change the difficulty or amount of rounds. Trials, which is the closest thing to an Arcade Mode, but once again, you can't change the difficulty or number of rounds. Survival, Training, VS(Only against another player through ad-hoc) and Gauntlet. Gauntlet is sort of a tutorial mode with 60 "challenges", but I found it very boring very quickly. Lots of these challenges are about learning how to block different attack strings. Character Creator returns, since for whatever reason it became one of the series' most beloved features.

 To say that the single player options are lacking would be an understatement. It's disappointing how little you can change settings on how to battle the CPU, it sucks how you can't just have a basic VS CPU in which you can pick who you want to fight. It blows how there are no character endings.

 The character roster is only missing the Star Wars characters and the 'guest' custom characters, y'knows, the ones that were grouped in a single character slot and were designed by a few Japanese Mangaka. On the plus side, we get Kratos who has an amazing moveset, very over-the-top and fun to use, as well as Dampierre who'd make his return in Soul Calibur V. I think it's not a bad tradeoff.

 So here's the thing about Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, the game plays as well as Soul Calibur IV(Meaning, REALLY well), every character that matters and every attack and move is here, and it even looks gorgeous. However, I think Namco dropped the ball by not focusing on the single player aspects, something I think is key on a handheld game.

 7.5

Game #990: Tenchu - Wrath of Heaven

 Two hours later I still couldn't my witty headline. Ninjas must've murdered it.

 Took me a bit of time, but I finally got to the only Tenchu game I had played in my youth, Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven. I'll tell you this, I definitely don't have the same patience I used to have for Stealth games or stealth sections, which definitely affects just how much enjoyment I can get out of this games, that said, it evens out considering I have some nostalgia for this game.

 Why change what worked well? Once again, we have three protagonists. Rikimaru and Ayame get 10 missions each, and once you finish both storylines you unlock Tesshu, who just like Takemaru before him... gets a reduced 6 mission count. I felt like the story elements weren't as prominent as they were in Tenchu 2, which was a bit disappointing since I enjoyed having a stronger narrative element. Plus, Rikimaru and Ayame's stories don't compliment each other, in fact, some details actually change depending on who you are playing as! Missions don't feel as different as they felt in Tenchu 2 between characters, however, characters get different bosses AND every missions has THREE different layouts, so there's plenty of replayability. Speaking of bosses, just like Tenchu 2, while their appearances are brief they are all very memorable and distinct.

 The game has a small multiplayer element, both co-op or versus, and while I didn't try it out, I remember playing it a lot with my friends back in the day. You get a TON of playable characters in this mode, with their own assassination animations as well as attack combos. It's a really great extra!

 The brunt of the game remains the same, pick a few ninja tools before each mission, a grappling hook, a ki-gauge that alerts you if an enemy or a civilian is nearby, etc. That said, fighting feels tighter than before, I didn't feel like the hitboxes were wonky at all. Overall movement was streamlined, now you can move stealthily while crouching or standing, the long jump was removed since your basic jumps are better because moving around in general is much smoother thanks to the removal of tank controls. So yeah the controls make this game much more fun to play than the previous games, not that the previous games were bad, they weren't, but the improvements are welcome. The grappling hook feels MUCH better too, I don't think I ever failed to grab onto an edge I aimed for.

 On the other hand, I think a couple of levels are a bit poorly designed, at least in my opinion. The game employs many more bottomless pits than even Tenchu 2, but they feel a bit unfair. Tenchu has never had checkpoints, and losing all my progress because I didn't know the floor below me would crumble left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even the revival item won't bring you back from a bottomless pit. That said, they put the power of the PS2 to good use, as stages are much, much larger than before and they pulled off some pretty interesting and creative environments to sneak around in.

 While Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven doesn't do absolutely everything better than its predecessor, but there were so many important improvements to how the game plays that make it clear in my mind that this is the best Tenchu I have played.

 7.5

Game #989: Resistance - Retribution

  It tried to kick my butt, but I resisted.

 When I first placed the Resitance: Retribution UMD inside my PSP I didn't know what I was getting into, for this eventually turned into one of the hardest games I've played on this handheld. Most commonly known as a series of first-person shooters, this Resistance is a third-person shooter that somehow works relatively well on the PSP... although with some caveats.

 The game is pretty lengthy, I'll give it that, it's way longer than you'd expect. The story follows one of the most unlikeable protagonists ever, Grayson, as he joins the French resistance against the alien invaders, the Chimera. The story takes twists and turns, but I found it pretty forgettable. The fact that I didn't care about any of the characters didn't help. On the other hand, the game in unbelievably pretty, looking better than some PS2 games even... although the games does go a bit hard on browns and greys. On the flipside, the UMD tray CRIES in agony when loading every stage for the first time. At firs the game is very easy. There are about 20 stages or so, say, the first 12 are pretty easy. Incredibly easy even. The next few stages do turn up the heat a lot and then, suddenly, you are being thrown through extensive gauntlets with checkpoints very far and in-between to the point that it becomes trial-and-error as you learn which enemies spawn when and were in order to deal with them before they fry your bacon. It stopped being fun at times.

 The game manages to work on the PSP by automatizing many different elements. For instance, Grayson is one sticky bastard, so getting close to walls or debris if there are enemies nearby will automatically make him take cover. Basic aiming is done automatically, with the game targeting whatever enemy it decides at random. It works well for the most part. You move with the analog nub and move the camera/your reticule with the face buttons. Once an enemy is targeted Grayson will only target it as long as it's within a clearly designated area in the screen, so you have to track it with the camera. That said, tapping the face buttons also cycle through targetable enemies, so it takes a bit of work to get the most out of the system. But I'll say it again, MOST of the time it works well. Sometimes you'll wish that Grayson would've targeted another enemy or that swapping targets was easier in the middle of a battle, but it's alright. You can take matters into your own hands by tapping up on the digital pad in order to aim manually in a more precise manner. The game drops the ball a bit here because it LOVES spamming these annoying enemies with huge heads that can only be defeated by shooting at their heads... which can only be done my aiming manually. They are not too hard once you know they are coming and from where, but the game LOVES spawning waves off them just to annoying since just a few of them making it close to you can murder you in seconds. It doesn't feel like a fair challenge since AIMING with the face buttons isn't the most precise thing in the world, y'know?

 There are 8 different weapons, with sounds like a lot, but a lot of weapons have very low max ammo caps. Rule of thumb being the more useful the weapon is, the lower max capacity it has. This also means that you'll sometimes have to shake things up and can't rely on the same weapons all the time because they'll inevitably run out of ammo. Every weapon has some sort of alternate function or utility which is pretty neat. The Auger can deploy a shield and its shots go through anything that isn't an auger shield. The Sniper Rifle can slow down time. The chimera assault rifle can charge a devastating shot.

 At times fun, at times frustrating, Resistance Retribution delivers a pretty decent third-person shooter on a handheld that has a single analog stick. Once you get accustomed to the controls the game becomes yet another example of all the great things that could be done with the PSP.

 7.0

Game #988: Yakuza - Dead Souls

  Thankfully not a souls-like.

 It's no secret that Yakuza: Dead Souls almost killed the series in the west, and I'm pretty sure it must've underperformed in Japan too, and, despite that... I'm glad that a game like this can exist. This is a pseudo-alternate reality pseudo-what if entry in the series that takes place after 4, in a world were Ryuji Goda survived, minus an arm, and in which zombies take over Kamurocho. I am not making this up. Also, it's a third-person shooter. This is not an April Fool's joke.

 Right out of the gate, the plot is not horrible. It's not as good as the plot from the main series, but it has a few decent moments. In particular, I think the plot does a good job of having the characters behave as they probably would during a zombie outbreak, from Kiryu trying to punch the zombies to submission, at first, to Majima enjoying the craziness. I particularly enjoyed this repentant take on Goda, he's the fallen dragon and he took his fall in stride. Like Yakuza 4 before it, the game offers four playable characters, Kiryu and Akiyama returning from Y4, Majima being playable for the very first time and Ryuji Goda filling in the fourth slot. The playable heroes don't interact as much as I would've liked, but when they do it's great. In a way, I'm a bit disappointed at the amount of plot in the game.

 Like Yakuza 4 and 5, every character gets a set of chapters before you get to play as the next character. Each character has their own unique weapon(Dual Pistols for Akiyama, a Mini-gun arm for Goda, a powerful Rifle for Kiryu and a Shotgun for Majima) as well as their own set of substories for complete. Unlike the rest of the series, however, levels and skills are shared between characters, so you only get stronger. This also means that aside from their unique weapons, characters are pretty much identical.

 Since Kamurocho is infested by zombies, certain areas are quarantined. When inside the quarantined zones, the game plays like your average Yakuza game but without the combat. Restaurants, Karaoke, Hostess Bars, Arcades, Bowling... everything is here. However, as you advance through the game, the zombie outbreak grows and grows and these facilities become blocked out of the quarantined areas. This doesn't mean you can't access them anymore, only that you'll have to get through infinite waves of zombies to get to them, following fairly pre-set paths. Yeah, exploration becomes a bit of a chore... Many streets are blocked off inside the zombie infested areas, and you can only enter this part of Kamurocho through a single gate, so expect a lot of running down the same streets, in the same order, blasting zombies left and right, because outside of Story Missions zombies spawn endlessly.

 As for the core gameplay, it's a very clunky third person shooter. No taking cover, no crouching, all you get is a dumb little sidestep/roll. There's also a melee attack but it's pretty much useless even when upgraded, that said, you can pick up items and use them as melee weapons which works much better. It's easy for enemies, if they manage to swarm you, to just lock you into taking damage and falling down every time you get up, although this tends to happen mostly in narrower spaces. Binary Domain this ain't. You use R1 to shoot and your character will shoot towards the enemy closest to you, you can hold down L1 to strafe. L2 allows you to aim manually, and I'll admit that landing headshots feel SO satisfying, but they made the awkward choice to make precision aiming work with the left analog stick, which will throw you off at first since it'd make more sense for it to be done with the right analog stick. There's a small amount of weapons, and you can upgrade them by finding the right materials. They use different sources of ammo, which use up slots in your inventory, but pistols have infinite ammo.

  Besides your average mindless rushing zombie you'll also find Mutants, which are tougher zombies with a chunky lifebar. These enemies can get a bit annoying, particularly the Aggro mutants that take oh so many bullets to bring down, since they can dodge your bullets. Honestly, at first these mutants were OK but by the end of the game, after going over and over and over through the infested areas of Kamurocho, in order to finish sidequests, I was sick and tired of fighting these Mutants.      

 Lastly, Heat actions return in the form of Heat Sniping. Just land damage to fill your gauge and then press triangle if close to an explosive object or interactive item and bring down tens of zombies in one shot. It's fine.

 Yakuza: Dead Souls is easily the weakest entry that has made it outside Japan... but it's not bad, it's just clunky. That said, as I stated before, I love the fact that such a weird spinoff can exist even if the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Yakuza fans like me will probably get a kick out of it, since it's more Yakuza, but people looking for a Zombie game or a third person shooter ought to look elsewhere, as you'll be playing this game for the plot and its characters.

 6.5

Game #987: Dynasty Warriors Next

  Thank you, next.

 It should be hard to screw something as simple as a Warriors/Musou game, us people that enjoy the series enjoy it despite how repetitive and reiterative these games are. But when Koei decides to screw the pooch they go all in, no stops. Dynasty Warriors Next is another terrible, terrible misstep in the never slew of Dynasty Warriors games.

 This game uses Dynasty Warriors 7 as a base, which should've been good news as that game took a lot of steps in the right direction, but they managed to break it by turning it into a showcase of the Vita's features. This means an aggravating amount of unskippable touch minigames. At any point in the game you might be making your way towards someplace only to be 'AMBUSHED' and now you must waste time touching stuff on the screen coming at you. And they have the gall to unmount you from your horse afterwards. It's as dumb as touching arrows or boulders or soldiers. Before some stages you might have to aim with a 'crossbow' and shoot by tapping the backscreen, or touch the backscreen to reveal a symbol you must then paint and all sort of boring, asinine minigames. Man, and the duels, they are AWFUL, you must touch the screen to block and swipe to attack but it never made much sense, so just do what feels right and pray you win the fight. At least the game lets you restart the duel if you lose. And there's no way to turn all this crap off.

 The rest of the game plays like your average Dynasty Warriors game, slash thousands of enemies using weak and strong attacks, as well as as super move. Remember how in Dynasty Warriors 7 you could bring two weapons with you? Characters are stuck with their default weapon type, for whatever reason. There's a new 'Chase' attack by pressing R that is like a cancel that allows you to extend your combos which is admittedly a neat addition. There's also a secondary super move performed by touching the screen and uses a separate gauge from your main super move. And, by the by, there's no life bar. Instead, the edges of the screen get progressively redder and then you die. What the....? No, really, what the hell where they thinking? I think your life regenerates over time, making healing items pretty much useless. I don't understand why they did this, it makes no sense, it's so stupid.

 Anyways, there are two main modes: Campaign and Conquest. There's also Coalition, but it's online only. Campaign follows the basic story of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and every chapter has you fighting as a different Kingdom. And then in one chapter you are Wei, and you kill Guan Yu, as per usual, and then... you conquer Shu and then Wu. Eventually the game just turns hypothetical on you, and after that chapter you unlock Shu and Wu's hypothetical campaigns, and afterwards you unlock the more slightly more faithful, but still hypothetical, chapter of Jin. Y'know, I liked the initial structure of this game since it followed the actual story from the novel, I've never been too fond of the hypothetical routes these games love to resort to.

 Conquest is sort of a micro-campaign. You select from different variations(Two Kingdoms, Three kingdoms, etc) and then you and the AI take turns competing for lands. Here's the thing, you can only invade areas that are next to yours and are of a lower level. You raise levels by using Stratagems, conquering and you get a free, random, level up per turn. After you select a land to conquer you play a proper stage. Thing is... the AI just conquers your lands outright, there's no stage to defend you stuff, so it could turn into a dumb back and forth until either of you are outleveled and can't do anything. And this means that you could find yourself in a situation in which you can't invade anywhere and must helplessly watch as the AI just conquers your lands. For free. This mode is needlessly tedious.

 The game has some strategic elements that aren't totally unwelcome. There's money gained after each stage which you can then spend on Stratagems during your turn. This is true for the Campaign mode, as you select areas to attack, the main difference between Campaign and Conquest is that in Campaign there's no AI enemy, you just pick stages from the map. Stages themselves also have strategic elements, as you must capture bases, and every base offers a different boon to the owner. Not gonna lie, I really liked that, as it's a very decent incentive to capture bases instead of just rushing in towards the enemy commander. Plus, you win by capturing the main base, not by slaying the commander. Capturing bases is done by defeating X amount of enemies inside it.

 Here's a curious thing... a stage could be rendered unwinnable. This happened to me one, but so many of my troops arrived inside the enemy base that, since the Vita was showing all my units at their base... there wasn't room for the enemy units. So the base was regenerating 'health points' but enemies weren't respawning fast enough. I spent 20 minutes hoping enough enemies would respawn fast enough, but it was a losing battle, so I just exited the game. And the game crashed on me one time, that wasn't very fun, as it was a hard crash so I couldn't go back to the Vita's dashboard.

 I'll give the game this, the loading times are super brief and the framerate is pretty good, very little slowdown. Plus, the game looks really nice with very detailed character models.

 And those two lines are the only praise I'll give the game, because unlocking characters is based on luck. After you're done with Campaign Mode you'll notice that you are missing quite a few characters. How do you get them? Conquest Mode. If you are lucky enough for the character you want to unlock to appear AND you are lucky enough for him or her to drop their card once defeated. Who... who came up with some of the design choices for this game? No, really, everything is so dumb, who were they appealing to? Clearly not fan of the series.

 They should've just released a port of Dynasty Warriors 7, now THAT would've been a good little game. Dynasty Warriors 7 is dumb at best and a chore at worst, and why would anyone even want to get it when the Vita has a port of DW 8? It's sad, because it's not like the game is completely horrible, whenever it plays like a real Warriors game it's really fun, and then you trigger an 'AMBUSH' and you're reminded why you dislike the game so much.

 3.0

Game #986: Disney Epic Mickey 2 - The Power of Two

  They keep saying Epic. I don't think it means what they think it means.

 Despite it's many flaws, Epic Mickey managed to be more than the sum of its parts. I think in no small part due to how ambitious it was, even it fell a bit short of its mark. Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two could've been something else, but they went for mass appeal, with a tacked-on multiplayer focus and ports to every console under the sun, instead of focusing on what made the first one good.

 The first thing you'll notice is that the game is beautiful. It's very colorful and now it's fully voiced acted. Mickey having a voice adds a whole new dimension to him, and Oswald's voice fits him very well. I'll be honest, I liked the relationship between Mickey and Oswald in the first game, so I like how Oswald gets a bigger role in this one. Regardless, the game being so pretty means it lost some of its edge. Epic Mickey 1 wasn't half as dark as people would think, but this game has an entirely different tone. I wouldn't say it's better or worse, but it's different and thus feels a bit disconnected from the original game.

 Player 1 plays as Mickey, who plays exactly like he did in the first game: Paint and Thinner, a useless spin attack and a double jump. Player 2 plays as Oswald who can throw his arm(!!!) like a boomerang and gets some electric gizmos. If you play by yourself you're stuck with a braindead Oswald. I mean, sure, when it comes to mandatory stuff the AI will perform, but playing by yourself means Oswald will refuse to help you get any collectible. It's INCREDIBLY annoying. You need Oswald cooperation to get most collectibles, but he can't be forced to do ANYTHING. And you NEED him to help you in combat too, but he'll help you when he feels like it. Building this game around co-operative play means that playing by yourself turns into a chore. And it needn't be so bad, if only the CPU would help you. If only you could swap into Oswald with the Select button. But nope, you are stuck playing a game with stuff forever tucked away from you unless you get another player to join in.

 The rest of the game is just standard platforming affairs. Puzzles feel way simpler than before, and the 'morality' system isn't as prevalent. Not to say it isn't there, but there are fewer instances of having to make choices. There are sidequests too if you can find them. While the paint and thinner system wasn't ground breaking, it felt creative, in this game it didn't. It probably has to do with having to make it easier to play with another player. Oswald's mechanics aren't as interesting either, just find an electric panel and press a button. They should've explored the paint/thinner mechanic further, it's such wasted potential....

 Speaking of interesting, what about the lost and forgotten toons? I don't remember the game adding any old Disney character into the mix, and most of the locations you visit in this game... are retreads of the previous game. At least the areas are different enough, but they could have added new zones or worlds. Another instance of failing to capitalize on what made the first game good.

 I came across a couple of bugs when playing the game too. One time a ghost, Ian, had to open a gate for me... but he wouldn't do it. I had to reload the checkpoint. Another time Mickey and Oswald had to hit switches at the same time, but my ever-so-useless Oswald refused to hit it... until I reloaded the area again.

 If this game did anything better than the first... it'd be costumes! You can unlock costumes both for Mickey and Oswald, which I found to be a nice little treat. The previous game included a Mickey and an Oswald cartoon, pretty cool little extras, this game has... 'Skeleton Dance', featuring neither! They shouldn't even have bothered.

 The most surprising thing about this game is that it was made by the same people that made the original. But the way they went out of their way to ignore what worked well about the first one makes it feel as if a completely new team had tackled the project. If anything, at least the first Epic Mickey happened, right?

 4.5

Game #985: Soul Calibur II

  Now THIS is Soul Calibur as I remembered it.

 I was worried that maybe I was too hard on Soul Calibur VI, maybe nostalgia was clouding my judgment. And then I decided to play Soul Calibur II again and realized I wasn't hard on it at all. This game was an instant classic the day it first released, and it has aged like fine wine.

 There's not much left for me to say about Soul Calibur that I haven't said in other entries, as the series hasn't changed much. Vertical and Horizontal slashes as well as a kick button are your main means of offense as well as throws by pushing two buttons together, you can also sidestep, block and parry incoming attacks. It's simple, it's flashy, it's snappy and it's fun. There are no energy gauges here nor are there cinematic super moves, if your move is strong you'll get a long-winded animation and your enemy if free to decide if it will easily sidestep or backstep away or be daring and try to hit you before your attack goes off.

 But really, there's something very pure to how this game feels, looks and sounds that makes it superior to the games that come before it(3 not withstanding since I haven't played it....yet). The character roster is absolutely perfect, every character has a real secondary costumes and some get an unlockable third. This game predates the dumb character creator, so secondary costumes fit the characters and don't feel like something that was quickly put together with the customization parts. I'm looking at you, Soul Calibur 4. I'd look at VI, but that one didn't even get secondary costumes.

 Weapon Master mode is an absolute treat, here is where you can unlock costumes for your characters as well as weapons, characters and new modes. The story element is almost non-existent, although every challenge has a rather lengthy text-description for added color. This mode has all sorts of gimmick fights and what not for you to test your mettle, and after you think you are done... you unlock harder variations of every challenge. This game has no shortage of content. Great roster, tons of modes, tons of unlockables...

 But the PS2 version is the worst port of the game. The Gamecube got Link, he didn't really fit in and his grab is super cheap(I remember cheesing the Weapon Master mode with it!) but he was a really cool addition. Spawn didn't fit either, but Spawn is cool. He was the only character I played one day I played with a friend on his Xbox since he was the only character I didn't have access to. I still don't! And what did PS2 players get? Heihachi Mishima. His style is cool, but... Heihachi? C'mon, gimme Kazuya or Jin don't give me the boring old man. Honestly, had it been Kazuya or Jin it would've been alright, boring because Namco owns Tekken, but alright. But Heihachi is easily the worst guest fighter Soul Calibur has ever had. He feels more like a punishment than a bonus.

 Poor guest fighter aside, Soul Calibur II is more than one of the best games in the series, it's also quite probably one of the best fighting games ever made. It plays like a dream, and I don't think any other game in the franchise managed to capture the same magic that makes SC II so much fun to play and invest time in. And it's hard, because it's something about how the game is presented, how it looks, how it sounds, how it plays that makes every click together and make it one of the best fighting games ever. Shame about Heihachi.

 10

Game #984: Digimon All-Star Rumble

 Sometimes digievolution is not the answer.

 Digimon fighting games have been a mixed bag, but the second Rumble Arena game was pretty decent, all things considered. Digimon All-Star Rumble shakes things up again, but being on more powerful hardware can't help if it's made on a small budget.

 All-Star Rumble is an arena fighter in which up to four Digimon can duke it out. You've got six different modes: Survival(3 lives match), Points(Kill the enemy more times in 3 min), 'Damage'(Deal more damage than the opponent in 3 minutes), Medal(Defeat enemies and collect three medals), Bomb(Like survival but there's a bomb that blows off. It's pretty much survival) and another mode in which you fight over a flag. Yeah, they weren't very creative. You can turn items on and off, but you can't change the ruleset. Survival is always 3 lives, time-based fights are always 3 minutes... kinda lame if you ask me.

 The cast of characters is so small too, only 12 characters. That's pathetic. Half of the cast comes from Adventure 1(Agumon, Gabumon, Gomamon, Tentomon, Biyomon, Gatomon), 2 come Adventure 02(Veemon, Wormon), 2 come from Tamers(Guilmon, Impmon) and I think the final two come from the anime series that was airing at the time. Every character has a Digievolution they can temporarily turn into by filling their energy gauge, and beating the Story Mode with a character unlocks their alternate Digievolution, usually being extremely cheap and overpowered. What really sucks is that some of these alternate Digievolution are shared. Agumon and Gabumon share Omnimon, which makes sense but it's still lame, Impon and Shoutmon share Shoutmon DX for whatever reason and Wormon and Veemon share Imperialdramon, which makes sense but it's still super lame and lazy.

 Ah, the Story Mode! That's were you unlock characters, and it will take you more than one playthrough, for you see, you start with only 4 characters and at the end of every stage you battle a Digimon, if he isn't on the roster yet then you unlock him. I played this mode three times, first with Agumon, then Veemon and finally Guilmon and that way I unlocked everyone. 

 At first I thought 'Oh! This is really neat! They made it into sort-of an adventure mode!" but the more I played the more I realized how basic it was. 'Cutscenes' are made out of CG still and tons of text. And, as I mentioned previously, you'll have to play this mode MORE than once to unlock everyone... and you'll never be able to skip the tutorial messages. Never. This mode is incredibly simple to the point that a tutorial is 100% superfluous, and yet, you can't skip or turn off tutorial messages on subsequent playthrough. Every stage is super short and super basic, you enter a room, fight weak NPCs and carry on until you reach the end, where upon you fight one of the playable characters under one of the six match rulesets.

  All right, so the first six stages are easy to the point of being a cakewalk. Then stage 7 happens and it gets cheap, having you fight strong enemies that leave little windows open for a reprisal, but it's doable. Stage 8 is an absolute nightmare because it spams strong enemies at you. And there are no checkpoints. Eventually I learned how to cheese it by spamming Veemon and Guilmon's Aerial Strong attacks, but my initial go at it with Agumon turned into 10 or so attempts. It wasn't fun with Agumon because it was so unfair, and it wasn't fun with Veemon and Guilmon because I had to rely on cheesing the enemies.

 I haven't gone over the basic gameplay, and thankfully, it's decent. Every character has four attack combos, one mashing Square(The weak combo), one mashing circle(The strong combo) and another two that are either two-Square or three-square button presses and then all circle presses, and another one that is either two-circle or three-circle button presses and then all square inputs. Triangle and Triangle plus Circle are your energy-consuming ranged attacks. There are two different energy gauges that fill as you land damage, the green energy gauge that is consumed by ranged attacks or by L1 cancels, and the Digievolution gauge. The cancel system is interesting because it makes no sense in Digimon but hey, if you press L1 as you get hit you'll teleport behind the enemy, provided you've got enough energy. If you press L1 during your own attacks you'll cancel the attack allowing you to extend your combos.

 Y'know, Digimon All-Star Rumble wasn't much fun, I think they weren't even trying. It's as if the publishers remembered they had the Digimon license, so they threw a couple of bucks together and got this basic, skimpy game developed. The good news is that afterwards Bamco would get their priorities in check and Digimon would get a fantastic new game, Cyber Sleuth. The bad news is that All-star Rumble happened and it probably soiled the Rumble arena name forever.

 4.0

Game #983: Shox

  This game shocks me.

 What is a Shox? Who knows, but it's the title of this racing game made by EA. Shox is a weird sim and arcade racer hybrid, for example, there's no manual transmission, just accelerating and breaking, but on the other hand you really have to learn how to take those curves.

 The can be played either in multiplayer or single player. It offers 24 tracks divided into four groups of six, each group is a 'class' which allows you to use any of six different vehicles. So, just as with the tracks, it's 24 cars divided into four sets of six. The progression system is a bit challenging, to unlock night versions of every stage you must reach a gold Shox rank, more on this later, to unlock a new racing track you must reach up to the second spot(Depends on the class, on the first class you only need fifth place, on the fourth class you need second) on the last track you unlocked. New cars are obtained either by gambling money or buying them. Gambling is the cheaper option, you have to win a mini-race against the CPU... who gets a head start. And the game auto-saves as soon as you select the gamble option so that you can't reload if you lose. Harsh!

 Gameplay is super basic, as stated before, but it adds the Shox gimmick to keep things interesting. Every track has three Shox zones, each zone having a defined beginning and end. The faster you close the gap the better you score, Gold, Silver or Bronze. The higher your rank, the higher the monetary reward. And there's another advantage to getting gold, as getting gold on all three segments will unleash a Shoxwave, which you can ride for even more money and better speed. Do be careful, as every time you crash against something your end-race reward will take a hit too! It's not the most innovative system ever, but it gets the job done.

 The game features 3 types of tracks: Dirt, Jungle and Snow, and all 24 tracks follow one of those themes, which change how you must approach them, Snow is super slippery and dirt tends to have many off-road sections. I liked how tracks looked in the game, although the more I played the more shared assets I found between them.

 While the game is solid enough, the collision physics are a bit suspect. Saw myself spinning out over the tiniest mistake when braking, one time the camera went nuts after I landed from a jump. I dunno, colliding against stuff just didn't feel right.

 I found Shox to be a fun racer, although not one I'll probably come back to any time soon. As I've written many times before, I'm not particularly fond of racing games so they really need to stand out in order to fully capture my interest.

 7.0

Game #982: Hot Potato!

  I liked them baked.

 Hot Potato! was a very early GBA game, and one that usually made it into my ROM downloads, although I never spent too much time with it. Regardless, I've a little bit of nostalgia for it, so I decided to add it to my GBA collection.

 This is a puzzle game reminiscent of Dr. Mario, albeit on wheels. You play as a cart that is continually moving forward and is continually supplied with alien potatoes, red and blue. You get 3 columns of 2 potatoes each, and can use the R and L buttons to rotate their positions. Pressing the B button will shoot forwards the 3 potatoes on the front. Your objective is to hit other potatoes of the same color in order to clear them. If you hit a blue potato with a red potato they'll stack, and if your cart hits a potato you lose a life. Sometimes you'll get a green potato that kills everything in its path.

 There are two modes to play the game, both made up of seven 'missions', Score and, well, Mission. In Score mode you must simply reach X amount of points. On Mission you must clear X amount of a special-looking potato.

 And... that's it. That's all there is to the game. It's very lacking in content, they probably thought that an addictive hook would be all that the game needed. But... the game is nothing worth writing home about. I think the game should've included an endless mode as well as at least a third potato color.

 5.0

Game #981: X-Men Mutant Wars

  Who said war never changed? These wars mutated!

 Believe it or not, X-Men: Mutant Wars is a fairly nostalgic game for me. My parents got me a bootleg copy many years ago one day we were at the flea market. But it was a super high-quality bootleg, came with a decent box and even a fully colored instruction booklet, the only give-away was the grey cart. A grey cart that looked exactly like the legit ones. Regardless, I spent countless hours playing and replaying said game, it was short and sweet... or so I thought.

 In Mutant Wars you play as a five-man team comprised of Wolverine, Cyclops, Gambit, Ice-man and Storm. Wolverine gets top billing as he has the most moves, he can perform a running knee attack, a super running slashy attack, an uppercut, a back-flip, a dive-kick and a basic slash. The other four just get projectiles they can either shoot straight or angle them up or down. As long as they are alive you can swap character by pressing select alongside a directional input, or just press select alone to go back to Wolvie.

 The objective of the game is to move from right to left, while pressing up or down when you get to either openings on the foreground or ladders or doors in the background. Getting inside these mini-sections is vital to finishing the game because they hide either upgrades for your character(Whoever picks it up gets it) or a key you need to go to the right of the stage's boss. You can actually defeat a boss but won't be able to progress until you find the key. While you try to do this you'll be endlessly pelted by endlessly respawning enemies. It feels like one of those super unfair shoddily made NES games, but thankfully it's not as unfair. Although some bosses are pretty flippin' unfair, bosses like Magneto. Heck, there's no way to block so some incoming damage you'll just have to take it because there's no mercy invincibility when your character gets up.

 And that's the game. There's not much to it. It's a simple game and not a very good one, but hey, I've a soft spot for it so I'll admit I might be a bit extra nice with the final score. It's not a bad concept for a game, playing as a Team of X-Men that is, and I like how Wolverine has all these different moves you can perform with so few buttons. The graphics look pretty nice too considering it's a Gameboy Color game. On the other hand, the gameplay is extremely basic and some bosses are downright unfair, so make of that what you will. As for the length, it's made up of 9 very short stages, and each stage has its own boss, most being actual X-men villains.

 3.5

Game #980: Disney Epic Mickey - Power of Illusion

  Illusory length,

 Epic Mickey on the Wii was pretty good, it was a bit lacking in certain aspects, but I see how a franchise could be born out of its foundation. Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion brings the saga into the 3DS, being a sort of side game to Epic Mickey 2, which I'll be tackling shortly.

 While Wii's Epic Mickey focused on old and forgotten characters, Power of Illusion is more focused on the more modern, 90's and later, heroes and villains. Aladdin, Hook, Peter Pan, Rapunzel, Ariel, The Beast and a few others make their debuts either as bosses or characters to be rescued. While not a bad set-up, I gotta say I found having old and forgotten Disney stars more charming, even if I didn't know them. The game is absolutely beautiful, it's a 2-D platformer, it uses very bright colors and the sprite depictions of the many heroes and villains are spot-on. But the animations, they are so smooth. TO be fair, most of the characters you rescue don't get proper animations, but hey, what actually is animated looks gorgeous.

 Mickey has a fair amount of tools at his disposal to deal with the incoming challenges. He can jump, but jumping onto an enemy will hurt Mickey, you must bounce on top of them by pressing the Jump button again. While you can press Jump at any moment, pressing Jump RIGHT before touching the enemy will produce a higher bounce, which is usually required to access secrets. If you wanna play it safe, as many enemies can attack upwards, you get a melee spin attack, and you can also shoot either paint or thinner. Unlike the original game both substances behave the same in combat, so just use whichever you don't mind wasting. You can collect money as you play through the levels which you can then spend on upgrades for Mickey.

 The original game was built around Paint and Thinner, so the mechanics had to make the jump into this little handheld somehow, and somehow they did. If you pay attention to the lower screen you'll sometimes find highlighted outlines or objects that you can then paint or thin. That's fine, on paper but both actions trigger a touch-pad minigame in which you must either trace a figure or use thinner all over it. Both Paint and Thinner can run out, and if you make mistakes or take your time they'll run out faster. Can't say I'm much of a fan of these.... as these mini-games bring the game to a halt and they are necessary to progress most of the time. I hated having to have the stylus at the ready while I enjoyed the much superior platforming mechanics. This is the 3DS, tacked-on touchpad minigames should've been a thing of the past.

 The game is fairly short, the first two world have about 5 stages each, and the last one only has 3. It took me almost five hours to finish the game, but the reason is two-fold: A) Some, if not most, optional quests you can accept from the NPCs you rescue will have you backtracking to previously cleared levels. Eventually I started ignoring them if I had to replay an old stage. And reason B) the last stages get pretty flippin' hard. I lost lives, there are infinite lives thankfully, more times than I'd care to admit.

 So this is the skinny regarding Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion, the core platforming mechanics are great. The game looks absolutely stunning. But... but the tacked-on touch-screen mini-games are annoying at worst and boring at best. It's also extremely short and they padded it out by having you replay stages, which is not very good. Sadly, the bad kinda outweighs the good which turns what could have been a very solid, if brief, endeavor into a decent but forgettable title.

5.5