Now Playing: Hidden Invasion

 This game is a joke.

 I hope you don't have motion sickness, because boy oh boy is this game a trip! The camera is absolutely insane, bonkers! You can't walk half a mile without the camera shifting and screwing up your movement. I also LOVE how enemies respawn constantly, and they love to throw stuff at you, knives, batons, bullets, you name it!

 It's horrible, horrible! What a bad, bad game.

Review #404: Jersey Devil

 The hero we deserve, not the one we need.

 Jersey Devil is a pretty obscure 3D platform game released exclusively on the Playstation 1. Starring the Jersey Devil himself, a little anthropomorphic animal styled like a nightly super hero, not unlike Darkwing Duck, that must do battle with Dr. Knarf, a pretty basic premise to outline the entirety of the game. The game is also prefaced by a beautiful 2D animation detailing how JD and Knarf first met. As a matter of fact, the game deserves some praise for the presentation, everything looks as if it came straight out of an animated show.

 There're 12 levels as well as four bonus levels. In each level you must destroy all Nitro Boxes in order to increase your 'power'(Does nothing for gameplay) and be able to enter the bonus levels, as well as save every hostage(2 per level, they do nothing but add to your completion level). Of course, if you can't be bothered you may as well just ignore both as the game can be finished ignoring either anyways. There're six worlds, with two stages each(not accounting for the four bonus stages), and it's usually one long stage followed by a shorter stage. Each level has a boss too, and they are relatively decent, since a few may require a bit of thinking.

 Jersey Devil has the most basic of movesets, he can jump, glide, punch, spin-attack and lift-and-throw boxes. The combat is pretty wonky, since enemies have weird invincibility frames during certain animations and JD's punch range is pathetic, so it's better to just spam your jumping spin attack and hope for the best. The jumping fares much better, while the physics behind jumping and gliding don't feel quite right, it works... when you're not going through platforms, which is a rare occurrence, but frequent enough as to be worth mentioning. Some things that may look like stuff you can stand on may just be decoration you can simply go through, and the camera does you no favors, while you can move it around with L2 and R2, it's pretty slow, and very rarely, the camera will also get in your way. The second slides level was a bit glitchy too, one of the slides threw me into the void three-four times, so I opted for an alternate route.


 Weirdly enough, JD will autojump whenever you get close to the edge of a ledge, which is annoying. The jump may throw you off and get you killed, or it may screw up with the jump you were planning to make, thus getting you killed again. And die you will, a lot. There're a lot of ways to die instantly, but the game is very, VERY generous with lives, I finished the game with over 70 lives to spare.

 I wish I could say that Jersey Devil is a 'hidden gem', but it's way too rough around the edges. What I can say, however, is that the game was left crying for a sequel that fixed everything, because Jersey Devil is a fantastic foundation for something else. A likeable, if a bit generic, cast of characters, a fantastic art direction and gameplay that needed refinement but works relatively well already. But alas, it wasn't meant to be...
 6.0 out of 10

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