Review #135: OutRun 2006 - Coast 2 Coast

 This is what fun is made of.

 If there's one thing I love when it comes to games, it's when they are arcadey, meaning, they are easy to pick up, fast paced and usually score based with very little nuances at their most basic level. I don't usually like Racing games, but OutRun was a game that I always enjoyed, so I knew, I just knew that I was gonna like Outrun 2006.

 I think calling OutRun a racing game is not entirely correct, sure, you are racing against the clock, but you are not racing against other racers(At least on the main mode). "Adventure Racing Game" suits it much better, reason being the way the game itself plays. At the start of the game you start of with 99 seconds on the clock and a very straight forward path that branches in two at the end, rule of the thumb being that the left routes are always easier than the ones on the right, and then whichever route you chose branches off again for a total of 15 "tracks" and 5 possible goals. Needless to say, there's a lot of routes(20 if I'm not mistaken) you can take, and each track is completely different from each other, which is why it feels more like an adventure than anything else. OutRun 2006 actually collects both OutRun 2 and OutRun 2 SP's tracks for a total of 30(Although, sadly, you there's no "mixed" set, you either play on 2 or SP's sets). The game also features two 15 track races(One for each set) which are quite long, but feel very epic and even more of an adventure.

 The game is very simple and built around 2 techniques: Drifting and Slipstreaming. Slipstreaming, the easiest one, consists of running behind another vehicle in order to have it break the windr esistance for you, thus boosting your speed. Drifting is performed by letting go of the accelerator, quickly tapping break and then accelerate again while engaging curves. If you wish to real the finish line, you will have to learn both techniques. One thing I really loved is the difficulty curve, when I first started I usually lost by the third track, but as I got better, learning how to play, I managed to reach every goal with very little trouble. It feels very natural, and very rewarding how you manage to get a little further every time. In no time I was clearing the 15-track monsters which felt incredible.

 Besides the traditional "OutRun" Mode there's three other modes: Heart Attack, in which you must fulfill challenges to earn points as you race through the game and Time Attack, in which you compete against Ghosts as you... race through the game. Time Attack is the only mode in which you can play the unlockable Reverse Tracks(or even Reverse routes, including the 15-track routes) as far as I noticed. Lastly, there's "Coast 2 Coast" AKA Mission Mode. There's two varieties, Girlfriend missions and Flagman missions. Girlfriend missions has you completing challenges for one of three girls, but these are way crazier than the ones features in Heart Attack, like counting cars, picking up food, avoiding meteors among others. Flagman challenges are more straightforward, most of them are simple "race your rivals" in which you start off in last place and must race your way to the top in a set amount of tracks, but there's also a few more interesting ones, like Elimination races, in which every few seconds the racer in last place gets eliminated. These missions are interesting in that they feature the reversed tracks and sometimes mixes tracks from 2 and SP, and they get progressively harder as you go along, culminating in a epic race in which you start in position 100 and must reach the car at 1st.

 Playing any of these modes earns you "Miles" which you can spend in the shop to buy a ton of unlockables, cars, music, reverse tracks and colors... and here's where my first gripe with the game pops up, there are PSP unlockables. This means that the game requires you to link up with the exact same version of the gameon the PSP in order to unlock them, which would suck had it not been for the "Unlock all" cheat. Probably best use it after you are done with the game, as it will overwrite your scores in Coast 2 Coast mode. The game also lets you play the original version of OutRun 2 SP, but it feels kinda needless, as the main game contains everything and anything this has and more, only that the Arcade version doesn't net you "Miles"... maybe it's there to give you a taste of some of the unlockable cars, since everything is unlocked from the start?

 Know what the game could've used? Local Multiplayer. There's absolutely no way to play this on the same console with other players, having online is Ok I guess? But who really used the PS2's online services? It's a bit disappointing really. Since I'm at it, although this is more of a nitpick, I would've liked a mode that let you race without a timer on top, the game really lends itself to casual play, so it would've been a nice addition.

 Graphics are pretty nice, I bet having real Ferraris was a huge selling point for some, but in my opinion, it's the beautiful tracks that steal the show. Each track is very distinctive, particular stand outs being Milky Road and Casino Town. It's a very lively, colorful game and these tracks never get old. The soundtrack is phenomenal, every song lends itself to the game, with "Night Flight" being my favorite. Nothing, absolutely nothing beats drifting at top speed while listening to Night Flight, it feels incredible.

 OutRun 2006 is an amazing game, I found myself getting sucked in the game oh so many times, driving in this game feels like a dream, the sense of speed coupled with the amazing environments and the great tunes.... It's a fantastic game.
 9.0 out of 10.

Now Playing: Asterix & Obelix - Kick Buttix

 Hey, I'm almost done with Outrun(Already!) and the month ain't over yet.

 So, I'm coming out of Outrun 2006, fun made disc, and.... Oh god. I loved this game when I was younger, I had such fond memories of it that I just had to have it.... Either it hasn't aged well or I didn't know what a good game was... but then again, I liked Quest 64. Still do actually.

 Animation is terrible, music is used sparingly who knows why, you switch between Asterix and Obelix when the game feels like switching, combat feels off, I can't pull off the Combo I bought I dunno why... Yeah, I'm not having much fun....

Now Playing: Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast

 Can't call me nooow, can't call me noooooow

 This game is what fun is made out of. I don't really like Racing games, but I've always had a soft spot for Outrun, mostly due to the fact that it feels more like a... racing game adventure than a racing game per se. And the new 3D graphics make it feel even more of an adventure.

 Initially I couldn't finish a single round, but after mastering the art of drifting I managed to, and let me tell ya, when you are going at top speeds, cruising through the fantastic locales, drifting alongside some phenomenal tracks(Night Flight being my favorite so far)... it feels amazing, AMAZING.

 I also found out that there are some PSP exclusives. thanks Sega. There's at least 1 unlockable on each catergory that requires you to link up with the PSP version of the game, because you really need to own the same game twice. Sigh, after I'm done with the game and unlocking everything myself, I'm gonna try the "100% cheat" and see if it unlocks the PSP exclusives, if it doesn't.... am I gonna be angry.

Review #134: God of War - Ascension

 I WILL HAVE MY (first)REVENGE... two games later.

 God of War Ascension is the latest entry in this hack-and-slash series, but chronologically, it's the first one. Because we really needed another prequel. One of my biggest gripes with the series in general is that they refuse to change, in more ways than one, but is Ascension the exception?

 The game takes place roughly 8 months after Kratos killed his family(Spoilers? Not that the game doesn't straight up tell you), imprisoned by the Furies. After breaking free, the game switches between past, on the beginning of his quest, and present, in the Fury Citadel. It's... and odd way of telling the story, interestingly, the "present" only gets three scenes, the start of the game, a short while midway through, and then the last part of the game, it's funny because midway through the game you defeat one of the Furies, yet in what would be the "past" scenes, which follow said fight, you'll be carrying more weapons(And probably enhanced them) and fight that very same Fury, unable to kill her. What I mean to say is that the style they chose to tell the story with doesn't mesh well with the gameplay. Not that it matters much, they promised a much more "human" Kratos, and they sorta delivered, but the story is very sparse(Not that it should matter in an action game) but the way this "nice" Kratos behaves around certain NPCs isn't very convincing. Furthermore, it being another prequel kinda takes some of the "impact" away, we already know how the story ends, who cares about the new story that won't affect or even be mentioned in subsequent games? Kratos has already slain gods, gone to Hades, awoken the titans... this adventure feels less impressive as a whole.

 Gameplay is almost the same as other GoWs, while I usually complain that combat is never changed enough(As in, you always get the same combos with the Blades of Chaos/Exile/Athena, but you have to earn all the levels back), this game does make some changes, in my opinion, for worse. For starters, Kratos doesn't get a real "alternate" weapon this time, instead, you can pick up weapons dropped from enemies, which sounds really cool until you realize that most of them are really weak, there's absolutely no reason not to use them over the other weapons. For some reason, they also decided to lock most combos behind the "Rage" meter, what's inexcusable is that they locked staple combos from the series! To be fair, since by the next game Kratos will have gotten stronger, it's kinda cool that he'll be able to use them without the need for rage, but seeing how most of us probably played this game after the others... it's kinda lost on us.

 As for the Rage meter, it increases as you deal damage, but taking damage or whenever you exit combat will make it decrease. It's not a fun mechanic in any way. New to the series, you can now imbue the Blades of Chaos with one of four "elements", Ares' Fire, Zeus' Thunder, Hades' energy? and Poseidon's Ice, each one has a couple of exclusive moves, unique bonuses and each one has a different magic attack. It sounds interesting, but Ice and Thunder are kinda weak when compared to Ares', and what Hades' lack in strength, it makes up in AoE and range. The game also introduces three objects that are used for puzzle solving or combat, these addition I actually liked. The Amulet allows you to freeze an enemy in place, or reconstruct certain broken structures, the Heart creates a double of Kratos that stomps the battlefield or can be used to hold levers or switches in place, and the Eyes can stun or dispel the Fury's Illusions.

 This is a GoW game, so of course QTEs return, but they have outgrown their welcome. Worst of all, it uses the same style GoW III used, with tiny prompts on the four corners of the screen. These create an illusion of interaction, and makes you pay more attention to the corners of the screen rather than to what is happening, which is a shame since cut-scenes are pretty cool. Just give me straight-up cutscenes, you are not fooling anyone, all I'm doing is pressing buttons. Another issue I had is that the button you use to grapple/initiate brutal kills on enemies is the same button you use to pick up weapons, and Kratos tends to prioritize grabbing weapons over causing damage, which was pretty annoying.

 While God of War has always had climbing segments, these were usually rather short, and often times there were enemies you could or had to slay while hanging... for some reason they decided to appease the Uncharted/Assassin's Creed crowd by adding scripted climbing sequences. While the vistas on some of these look rather pretty, they feel very out of place in a GoW game, not to mention that there are no enemies in these, it's just Kratos moving along ledges or broken walls, jumping from gap to gap just because. They also added some sliding sequences, they packed a ton of these in the earlier parts of the game, to a point where they seemed forced, but luckily they drop in frequency on the latter half of the game, maybe they realized that it was only amusing the first two times. And to further prove that this time they went with style over substance, there are a couple of times where the camera will zoom all the way out, which admittedly looks very pretty, but during combat you won't be able to distinguish what is gonna attack you next and/or how to dodge or block appropriately.

 The game lasts seven hours, probably less if you know what to do, which makes it shorter than any other console GoW game. But while previous GoWs, even handheld ones, held a plethora of unlockables in the way of challenge arenas and trials, Ascension has... nothing. Oh, they do have a tacked-on multiplayer mode, but it's hardly the same. In Multiplayer, you choose an allegiance(Zeus, Ares, Poseidon or Hades) which affects your magic and your stats. They also allow you to customize your character... barely. There's a decent amount of armor items, but everyone plays as the same tall, muscular, bald guy, but most of these items are either earned by playing a lot or a couple of them are only obtainable by paying real money. Microtransactions in a first party 60 dollar game, way to go Sony! Heck, the Cestus weapons are only obtainable with real money. As for the mode itself, it does offer a fair amount of modes, there's a couple of single player trials, co-op stages, variations of deathmatch and capture the flag, with both original maps and maps based off areas of the main game. Regardless, GoW never needed a Multiplayer mode, it does feel tacked on, and the addition of microtransactions does nothing to hide that fact.

 If there's one thing that can't be argued, is that the presentation is top notch. Graphics are amazing, textures, architecture, human characters and monsters, all look gorgeous and very detailed. Animation is as fluid as ever, with a silky smooth frame rate at all times. There's some particularly amazing vistas in this game, and the last boss looks amazing, even if the fight itself is a bit disappointing. Music sets the mood for each scene perfectly, and voice acting is top-notch, as per usual.

 I may have spent most of the review complaining about it, but the game holds the same foundations as every other God of War game, it is a fun game, it is entertaining, but it's probably the weakest entry in the God of War series.
 7.5 out of 10.

Review #133: Shin Megami Tensei - Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers

 Surprise review(I was 6+ hours in by the time I had access to my computer, so I skipped the impressions)!

 It's no secret that I'm  rather fond of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, so as soon as I heard that Atlus was porting one of the many games that hadn't reached stateside, I knew I had to to had it. Soul Hackers is a first person RPG set in present-ish day Japan, as in most SMT games, you are to obtain the aid of demons in your adventure.

 As per usual, you take the role of a silent hero, with a name and last name of your choosing. In this particular instance, you are a member of the Spookies, a group of hackers that live in Amami City, a city that thrives in technology and information transmission. Very early in the game, a new virtual city game launches, Paradigm X, and you alongside Hitomi, a fellow member of the Spookies, hack your ID into the beta testers... soon enough you ran across Kinap, a spirit that sends you on quests through the eyes of dead people, and Hitomi gets possessed by the Demon Nemissa, and then demons start appearing on certain locations... Yes, it's Shin Megami Tensei alright. I found the story to be just the right amount of interesting and engaging to keep you pushing on, but by SMT standards, it's not too deep or long(I clocked 25 hours before finishing the game without altering the difficulty), but most of the main cast are deep enough with different personalities to make them endearing.

 When inside dungeons, the game takes place in first person, as you go around exploring. Dungeons start off pretty straight forward, but get progressively more complex as you go along, the complexity never spikes too hard which is a good thing. Another thing I kinda liked is that dungeons are quite long, now a days dungeons tend to last 20 minutes or so, not here, and the random encounter rate isn't too big. Battles are turn-based, and you get plenty of options. your main character can talk to demons, to negotiate with them and try to recruit them, hit with a sword, hit with a gun, use items or summon demons, Nemissa/Hitomi can use a sword, a gun, items or magic while you can order your demons yourself or have their AI choose their moves, they can't use items though. Both enemies and allies have different resistances and weaknesses, sometimes this translates into draining or even reflecting a source of damage, these are innate to each demon, but on humans it depends on what armor pieces their are wearing. It's a fun combat system, but sadly before the "press turn" mechanics that are so fun in modern SMT gams.

 Defeating enemies will reward you with experience points and the most important currency in the game: Macca. Macca can be sold for money to spend in shops, it can be used to negotiate with demons, you need it to fuse demons(Demons don't level up, so you must fuse or recruit new demons in order to maintain a good party) and you need it to summon demons. Yes, summoning a a demon(Placing them from stand by into your party) costs a certain amount of Macca depending on the demon, and just having them on the party consume Macca for each step you take in the dungeon(Which is why you should only fill all 4 demon slots on boss fights only). Honestly, it's not as annoying as it sounds, Macca was never an issue for me. What is annoying, however, is the Loyalty system. Demons have different personalities, and these reflect on how they want to be commanded("dumb" demons should be allowed to do what they want, "Sly" demons like casting spells, "Wild" like to attack,etc), and unless they hit Loyalty level 5, there's a chance that they might not listen to your orders. But what is annoying is that sometimes, even with maxed loyalty, they will refuse your order and do whatever they want, and these will cost you loyalty! "Grinding" for loyalty on your demons, to have them at optimum loyalty for boss fights, isn't much fun.

 The main character carries a "COMP", a miniature computer slotted on his arm, which is where you carry your demons(Demons are data). There's a maximum slot count, which you should keep in mind, but the best feature of this COMP is that you can slot it with different chips. Some are merely cosmetic, but others provide useful qualities, like healing you as you walk or allowing you to save anywhere. Speaking of saving anywhere, that one is kind of a must, seeing how cheap the game gets on the latter dungeons. Latter dungeons have enemies spamming Hanma, Mudo or Stone-inducing attacks. Y'see, if the main character dies, the game is over, even if you have other allies alive. Hanma and Mudo, if they hit, are 1 hit KOs, and if you main character gets petrified, it's game over as well. Now, you can nullify these depending on your equipment, but having resistance to all three is either impossible or crippling your defense. It gets borderline frustrating just how much enemies love spamming and targeting the main character with these by the end of the game, which is why the Save Anywhere feature is so useful. Going back to the COMP, very early in the game you get "Hacks", which allow you to decrease or increase the difficulty(As far as I could tell, it affects the damage you receive? I didn't test it much as I preferred to stay on the default difficulty), allow you to see the enemies weaknesses and strengths among other goodies.

 As for the presentation.... this looks like a DS game A pet peeve of mine is when people say that a game looks like "A game from X Console", X usually being a console from a previous generation, but in this case, it's true. Graphics are very dry and lack any kind of animation, it's not ugly by any means, but it looks very dated. The 3D does nothing for the game, might as well not even bother. Music was pretty good, not the best of SMT's soundtracks, but it's good, fitting music. As for the voice acting... every scene in the game is voiced, and the voice acting is excellent, every performance was believable. Lastly, while the game is rather short for an SMT game, finishing the game unlocks "Extra Game", a six mini-dungeon romp with extremely hard bosses, if you want a real challenge, and you can't save until you are done!

 Soul Hackers is a really good game, but rather short by SMT's standards. Thanks to the "hacks", it's pretty accessible if you aren't familiar with SMT, although the latter dungeons can get pretty annoying with all the instakill spell spam. It's hard to recommend over other SMT games, but it's still a good game.
 7.5 out of 10.

Now Playing: God of War Ascension

 I'm not done with Darksiders II!

 Darksiders II is awesome, but it's pretty clear I won't be done with it by the end of the month, and I've been wanting to play this one for a while, and since vacations will be over by the end of the month... I said let's do this.

 Multiplayer: Decent-ish. It's nothing special, it's full of microtransactions if you want the really cool looking armors, and then there are other armors that you need to grind levels. Also, you HAVE to be bald. It feels tacked on and the microtransactions add insult to the injury.

 Single Player: Graphics are amazing, probably the best looking game I've ever played. Gameplay is basically the same as previous games, but for some reason they tied some of Kratos' old moves behind the rage meter. Why? I mean, it makes it look cool when you play GoW 1 or Chains of Olympus, with a stronger and oler Kratos, and having those moves as normal moves, but since this one was the last released, it's just annoying. And the QTEs are getting old, they outgrew their welcome by the time GoW III hit the scene, this is just dumb. And did they really need all this climbing sequences? The Uncharted/Assassin's Creed influence is undeniably, GoW always had platforming, but not like this.

 It may sound like I've only bad things to say about it, but I am having fun, just not as much as I had with previous games.

Review #132: Street Fighter Alpha Anthology

 Even more Street Fighter goodness.

 Street Fighter Alpha Anthology is a collection of every single iteration, arcadewise, of the Street Fighter Alpha series. It'd take a while to get in-depth about each of the seven games, so I'll just talk a bit about every game.

 First up is the very first release, Street Fighter Alpha. This is, probably, the slowest SF Alpha game, it's pretty easy to notice, not that that makes it bad. This game introduced the basic mechanics on which the rest of the series would build upon, there's Air Guarding, Alpha Counters and the then-new three-tiered energy meter which you could burn on Alpha Counters or special attacks of varying strengths, depending on how much meter you'd spend. The game offers a then-respectable 13 character roster, and the very first time Final Fight would cross over to the Street Fighter world via Guy(even though it was already confirmed that both series took place in the same world). It's a decent time-waster, but having the much superior Alpha 2 and Alpha 3, there's no real reason to return to this one. Besides the Arcade mode, you get VS, Training, Survival and a very short "2 vs 1" mode. Oh, and the font is kinda hard to read.

 Alpha 2 introduces 5 new characters, various tweaks, new endings for every character and the addition of "Variable Combos", by spending meter and pressing either two kick or two punch buttons. There's no much more to say about this one, it's basically Alpha 1 with more characters. Then there's Alpha 2 Gold, which introduces Cammy, new moves for some characters and "Super Turbo" versions of characters returning from Street Fighter. To be honest, there's little point in to playing Alpha 2 when Alpha 2 is clearly the game with more stuff, even if most is just fluff. Both Alpha 2 and Alpha 2 Gold contain the same game modes as Alpha 1.

 Alpha 3 not only contains even more characters, but the overall gameplay received major tweaks. For starters, after picking a character you get to pick an "ISM", basically, an style. You get Variable Ism, which turns your Energy Meter into a two tiered gauge that allows for Custom Combos, Standard Ism, basically Alpha 1 style and X Ism which gives you a single energy bar and reduces you to only one Super, albeit much stronger than its Standard Ism counterpart. Clearing the game with at least one character unlocks Street Fighter Alpha 3 Upper, which is Alpha 3 with a ton of new characters and new playstyles, just as Alpha 2 Gold makes Alpha 2 obsolete, the same goes for Alpha 3 Upper and Alpha 3. Contains the same modes as the previous games, but the 2 vs 1 mode is fleshed out.

 Then there's Super Gem Fighter Mini-Mix, a fighting game featuring super-deformed incarnations of various characters from Capcom fighting games(Mostly from Street Fighter). It's a very different kind of game, much more beginner friendly, there's only a Punch, a Kick and a Special button. When you hit your enemy, or various objects that randomly spawn, they drop gems which you can pick up to strengthen your special moves. While it's very cutesy and easy to play, it does have a little bit of depth and it's fun for a while.

 After beating the previous six games with at least 1 character you unlock Hyper Street Fighter Alpha. Just as with Hyper Street Fighter 2, you can pick any iteration of a character and pit it against any iteration of another character. There's also bonus "Styles" based on Darkstalkers, Marvel VS Capcom and Street Fighter 3 to further mix it up. It's a great bonus but... only Training and VS player mode, disappointingly.

 Luckily, when it comes to presentation, this holds true for every game: Graphics are very good, very colorful, while the animation isn't as smooth as Street Fighter 3's, it has a very anime feel. Characters have big frames and even bigger muscles(Not as big as Street Fighter IV though!), alongside a very flashy presentation thanks to the FX and the style used for cutaways between matches and menus. Music excellent, offering a wide arrange of tracks throughout all 7 games, ranging from really good to catchy. Bonus points for having 0 load times after you pick a game! There's also a nice variety of extras in the form of secret menus and color edit on every character in every game.

 While I don't find Alpha as appealing as Street Fighter III, as a whole, this is a better compilation than the Anniversary Collection. Even if you only plan to play Alpha 3(Seeing how its got the most characters), it's nice to have the other 2(5?). If you love Street Fighter, or Fighting Games, this is a no-brainer.
 9.0 out of 10.