Now Playing: Jersey Devil

 A super hero with horns.

 Jersey Devil's a game I've been interested in for the longest time and today, for the first time in my life, I got to play it. I've played a small section of the first level, and it's alright. It lacks the oomph that other mascot platformer games of its era have, and the jumping doesn't feel quite as good, but I think it's got a very interesting premise, and a very neat character. And the opening animation was brilliant.

 Here's to hoping that the game maintains this level of quality and doesn't dip, because I think we may have a fun little romp in our hands.

Review #403: Midway Arcade Treasures 3

 More like Arcade antiques, am I right?

 Midway Arcade Treasures 3 was the final compilation they released on PS2, this time focusing on Racing games. While this offering only housed 8 games, it features more modern, heavier games than previous volumes. It's also the only volume to focus on a single genre, whether that's a good or bad thing depends entirely on your taste.

 What I discovered while playing some of these games for the first time and replaying others is that... most of these haven't aged well, and most of them are good for arcade releases, but will feel lacking in content if held to console game standards. Also, most of the games were meant to be played with a steering wheel-type joystick, so the analog stick doesn't work quite as well due to the sensitivity of the steering.

 Super Offroad and Super Offroad track pack: An isometric four-player racing game, it's rather fun for what it is, and it's got a nice upgrade system that lets you enhance different parts of your vehicle after each race. Tracks start repeating after a while, sometimes having you race in the opposite direction, and controls are rather sluggish. The track pack is basically the same gameplay but on different tracks.
 5.0 out of 10

 Race Drivin is a very primitive 3-D first-person driving game. It's slow and clunky to a nigh unplayable degree. The game is nice to have as a curiosity of what the earliest days of 3-D were like, but as a game it's terrible.

 1.0 out of 10

 Badlands is, basically, Super Offroad on a post-apocalyptic setting. The same enhancement system is here, but now you can shoot against other racers.

 5.5 out of 10

 I think S.T.U.N. Runner could've been a fun game if only the hadn't botched the emulation on the PS2 version of this compilation. Basically the game runs faster, WAY faster than intended, which makes certain obstacles pretty much unavoidable. It's a bit different from other games, although you are being timed, you can only steer left and right to avoid obstacles, there's no acceleration button, and you also get to shoot at obstacles ahead of you. It's an interesting game, and it's possibly fun when running as intended. Possibly.

 3.0 out of 10

 Now we get into the good stuff, starting off with San Francisco Rush The Rock Alcatraz Edition, yeah, the title is quite a handful. You've probably got good memories about the game, but, sadly, it hasn't aged very well. Handling feels very clunky, and the once oh-so-fun physics now feel a bit wonky. There're 7 different tracks, and they are a pleasure to look at... sadly, the music is awful, just awful. And the sound design is absolutely terrible, the screeching tires will make your ears bleed. It's particularly grating since laps are rather long, and in between the annoying music and the horrible tire sounds... let's just say that extended play sessions will take a toll on the player.

 6.0 out of 10

 I had never played Offroad Thunder before, heck, I had never even heard of it, but boy was I pleasantly surprised! It features three different modes, which are basically all just variations of racing with a flag gimmick or a point based gimmick, that can be played on the same 8 tracks. Speaking of those, the courses are brilliantly designed, discovering them was quite a treat. The game does suffer from some hefty slowdown though.

 7.0 out of 10

 The bad news is that this is not an arcade perfect port of San Francisco Rush 2049, the good news is that this is a port of the Dreamcast enhanced port of said game. This means more modes, more tracks, more everything even a fun little multiplayer battle mode. Not only does this game look better than San Francisco Rush, it also looks better, sounds, plays better and smoother too. There're only six tracks total, with two being unlockable, but you can customize a lot of parameters, like number of laps, fog, wind or even if you want to race through the track the other way around. Rounding this up, you can also customize various parts of your car to personalize its stats, looks and style. San Francisco Rush 2049 is pretty good! Very skimpy on content, but very replayable.

 7.5 out of 10

 And lastly, the crown jewel of this collection, Hydro Thunder, and once again, we get the Dreamcast port of the game, which adds a few new tracks for a total of 12. The game plays like a dream, you must course through water and sea, collecting boost icons trying to beat all 15 other races. Tracks are gated behind how you perform in races, get Top 3 on all easy tracks to unlock medium, get top 2 on those to get hard tracks, etc. Sadly, this also means that if you're not good at the game, or don't care to get good at it, like me, you won't get the final 7 tracks, oh well! Hydro Thunder is a blast to play, and it's the best all-around package.

 7.5 out of 10

 If you ask me, how much mileage you'll get out of this compilation is directly tied to how much nostalgia these games manage to get out of you. A lot of the games simply haven't aged very well, some are better off left as curiosities, and the even a few the best games are lacking in depth and/or content.

 7.5 out of 10

Review #402: Tony Hawk's Underground

 It's been quite the ride, filled with bails and nails.

 It's interesting how everyone's got their own favorite Tony Hawk game, huh? Starting with 2 up to Underground 2, each game and those in-between have their own collective of people that consider it the best in the series, heck, even American Wasteland's got a few! Underground 1 marked quite a change for the series, now a story mode surrounding your created skater would become the norm, and it introduced the ability to get off your board, a godsend!

 The game features the usual assortment of modes: Story, in which you follow your created skater's story as he deals with Eric Sparrow's antagonizing shenanigans over and over and over again. The story is surprisingly fun, and Eric is a character you'll learn to despise, making for an engaging villain of sorts. Free Skate is back, of course, and so is the usual gamut of multiplayer modes. Besides creating a character, there's a new 'create a trick' menu, but it's not too in-depth and I didn't really care about it.

 For as amusing as the story is, the mode itself is a bit lacking in polish. There're a bunch of car driving missions, which while not annoyingly hard, certainly are a bit of a bore. The controls are sluggish, the driving feels awful, the stages were not meant for cars and the missions are uninteresting, luckily they did away with these in future installments. There were a few too many 'Find X amount of Y' missions for my liking, it even seeped into other missions like 'Find X and perform Y trick next to them', you don't even get a compass, so they are timed scavenger hunts, kinda like the older Tony Hawk games.... of which I'm not that much of a fan and it's worse since these stages are quite large. The challenge is finding the stuff, not performing it, it's not fun, it's not challenging.

 What it does get right are the new additions and how stats work. Stats are gated behind challenges that you must perform, like grinding for 8 seconds in order to enhance your grind, and these challenges are gated behind story progression. This makes sure that you won't be too overleveled for current tasks, which is fine, while also having, in my opinion, the most fun way to increase your stats. As for the ever growing pool of moves, tricks and techniques, we've got getting off your board, which lets you easily reposition yourself as well as wallplanting, by pressing X and down when going towards a wall, which serves not only as a way to extend your combos but to avoid losing one if you would've hit the wall.

 I think Underground deserves to get praised for all that it brought to the series. Whether you like it or not, having an actual story became a focus point on the series, which I liked, and the new mechanics, getting of your board and bouncing off walls would become some of the best tools to get around levels or extend combos, with creativity and ingenuity. That said, for as much as the game meant for the future of the franchise, I do think that Underground 1 is a bit lackluster, but entirely enjoyable.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Tony Hawk's Underground

 I played the best, now comes the rest.

 Well, I left Tony Hawk's Underground last since I wanted the last Tony Hawk game I played to be one of the bunch that followed the style I liked most.

 My initial impressions are pretty good, as with Tony Hawk's Underground 2, you develop skills by performing 'challenges', but unlike American Wasteland's dumb limitations, gating them behind story progression is actually a good idea.

 But the best thing about this game, which I guess I took for granted in future games, is getting off your board, man, is that a game changer. Well, maybe not a 'game changer', but certainly something that could've come in handy before!

 All in all, it's Tony Hawk, the kind I like!

Review #401: Gungrave

 Ain't no rest for the wicked.

 Let's be honest, you've never ever heard of Gungrave, have you? A precious little gem in the rough that somehow managed to earn itself an Anime series as well as a much improved sequel. This game mixes Devil May Cry's focus on style with third person shooting and Trigun's Nightow's fantastic art.

 There's not much to the plot, and what little plot there is is there for Beyond the Grave, our hero, to rediscover, as he is suffering from amnesia, a secondary effect from his revival. A mute zombie with a mission, that he is, as he tries to protect Mika, the daughter of the previous big honcho of The Syndicate, who wants her. It's not a particularly interesting plot, but what it lacks in substance it makes up in style. Everything in the game looks cool, the hero, the main villains as well as the cell-shaded graphics slapped with saturated black for shadows, not unlike an american comic book. It makes for quite the treat to watch.

 You will learn to love that square button, as you'll be mashing and smashing it all the way through the end in order to shoot your main means of offence, your twin guns. You can dive sideways, backwards or forwards by pressing X, use the giant coffin Beyond the Grave carries on his back as a melee attack by tapping R1 and triangle to use your special demolition shots. Grave can't take all that much punishment, but he has a regenerating shield that recharges after avoiding taking damage for a very little while, but you're encouraged to keep on getting in the middle of shoot-outs in order to build your combo gauge and amass Demolition Shots. It's a fun, simple, maybe even brain-dead game, but it will take the toll on your thumb thanks to all that square button-pressing.

 But as fun as the game is, it does come with a few little flaws, most which were fixed in the sequel. Controls are fairly sluggish and Beyond moves like, well, a zombie, which may take a little while getting used to, and the camera is sub-optimal, so don't be surprised if you find yourself not know at what you're shooting at since the camera hasn't turned the corner, unlike you... or maybe the game's short draw-distance is hiding enemies away, who knows! Regardless, as well as enemies you'll be fighting slowdown too when it gets too crowded. And while you have four different Demolition Shots available, you can only switch among them by pausing the game, which is a bit dumb. The game only lasts two hours as well, maybe less if you skip cutscenes.

 Gungrave is a fun little game lacking a whole lot in substance but making up for it in spades with style. I have fond memories of the game from when I was younger, and I had a blast playing it this afternoon... but the sequel is oh so much better, and considering you don't really need to know this game's story to play the sequel... I'd advise just skipping this one and getting Overdose.
 6.5 out of 10

Review #400: Suikoden II

 Bigger, badder and better than Suikoden I.

 Suikoden was a fairly unique little JRPG that dealt with themes of politics and war, taking place in a contained region, as opposed to the usual 'defeat the poor attempt at a sympathetic villain, save the world, maybe get the girl' plot that JRPGs love. It had its fair share of unique mechanics and terminology as well as a world that was yearning to be further developed, and then a sequel happened...

 After being sold out by their own forces, Jowy and Riou, two teenagers at the service of Highland's military, become outcasts and become embroiled in a war between nations. There're plenty of poignant scenes, epic battles, epic villains, turns, twists and even flying squirrels. The story is pretty darn fantastic, dealing with subjects of good, evil and what's in-between, having armies duking it out not because of morality, but because of different perspectives. It's a very engrossing story, despite the sometimes spotty translation, and the characters that the game opted to focus on are fairly memorable. There're plenty of returning characters, and if you transfer your old Suikoden savefile, you'll get a few bonus extra lines from them. Luca Blight is the game's only real villain, and what a villain he is, stealing every scene he's in, and the last battle against him is fantastic, and it doesn't even mark the end of the game!!

 The brunt of the game plays like the rest of the games in the franchise: Exploring, duels and strategic battles. As per usual, there're 108 recruitable characters, some will offer passive bonuses to your headquarters, but most of them can be taken into battle. This time around there're up to three different rune slots per characters, so you can customize your spells a lot more, no long must you sacrifice your only rune slot to be able to dash. Heck, you don't need a rune to run this time around anyways! Finding all 108 characters is still nigh impossible without a guide, so do yourself a favor and find one, it's no fun missing out on the best ending because you didn't know that there was only a tiny window of time available to recruit Futch and Humphrey!

 Random encounters play out the same, with a party made up of up to six different units, and they play out in turns, same old, same old. Duels are the same, you must figure out what the enemy is gonna do in a rock-paper-scissors fight according to what they say. Strategic Battles feel more like an SRPG than before: You move each and every individual unit on your army over a map, and then engage in battle or cast spells. It's fairly mundane, and most of these feature a few twists and turns so that they are over pretty fast. Still, be worried, as death of a unit might mean permanent death for some of the defeated characters.

 Do keep in mind that it doesn't matter how you play this game, be it PS1, PS2, PS3 or through emulation, the game will feature audio bugs of different kinds. Most notably, a few songs won't play, ever, even though they are in the disc, so a lot of the strategic battles are fought in complete silence! And while being able to recruit McDohl, Suikoden I's hero, if you have a Suikoden savefile, is a great little bonus, the game will kick him out of the party pretty often, and going back to Gregminster to recruit him again is a pain in the neck that makes it almost not worth it. Almost.

 Suikoden 2 is fantastic. Riou and Jowy's plight to end the war, the different roads they take, the people that gather around them and fate itself will put them at odds with each other. It's an engrossing tale, and the gameplay is a fine tuning of what came before it. While its explosive price was kind of prohibitive, its PSN rerelease means there's no excuse for skipping it.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #399: Suikoden

 War never changes.

 15 years have passed since the liberation of Sol-Falenas, but the world of Suikoden is not a peaceful place, this we shift our attention towards the Scarlet Moon Empire. Tir McDohl, son of one of the greatest generals in the army is the game's hero, who soon comes into contact with one of the 27 True Runes, comes face to face with corruption and must lead the rebel armies against his own kingdom. It's Suikoden alright. While it lacks the layers of depth the rest of the franchise has, the story is pretty darn interesting, and there're more than a fair share of surprising twists and shocks, keeping the player invested all throughout the 20ish hours it takes to complete.

 As with the rest of the franchise, this is a turn-based RPG with three different battle types: When exploring dungeons you'll engage in random encounters, and these turn-based battles are just what you'd expect. Six man parties, unite-attacks between certain units, Runes(Magic) and items. Customization is a bit more limited, understandably since this was the first game in the series, since characters can only equip one rune and one rune only. The inventory is a bit weird as well, each character can carry about 10 items, and that's your total inventory, and while you can swap items around inventories, you can't trade them with other items, so you have to make space in a character's inventory if you want to give them a new piece of equipment for them to equip. It's a bit archaic, but nothing you can't get used to. One of my biggest peeves with the game is how much the game forces certain party members on to you. About 70 of the 108 recruitable characters can be taken into battle, but frequently the game will force you to use specific characters, which means that, most of the time, you've only got two free slots for characters that you actually want to use. Pro tip: Keep Victor and Flik up to date, since they'll be in your party any chance they get, the last dungeon included.

 Strategic Battles are the second mode of battle, and these represent Wars. These are... pretty lame and underwhelming. Basically, you and the enemy choose between Bow, Charge or Magic, and they have a rock-paper-scissors relationship. The worst part about these battles is that party members may die permanently. Then, lastly, we've got duels, which also work with a rock-paper-scissors relationship between Attack, Defend and Special. They lack the excitement that future games would adorn these duels with, but they're inoffensive at worst and amusing at best.

 Basically, Suikoden 1 is quite fun and entertaining, but future games manage to make it feel somewhat outdated. 1 Rune per character, NPCs that sometimes block your way when they move around towns, not being able to run without wasting a rune slot with the Speed rune, less than convenient inventory systems, lame Strategic battles, just 20 hours long etc. Still, the plot is pretty good, which is what matters the most in JRPGs and the battle system is pretty fun, a taste of things to come. It's easy to recommend, just keep expectations in check.
 7.5 out of 10