Now Playing: Devil May Cry 2

 Another devil may or may not cry.

That's one badass cover.

 Since here I am, waiting for Bloody Roar 2 to arrive, why not play a little bit o' Devil May Cry 2? I fondly remember playing this game for the first time this one day my parents had a meeting to attend to, so there I had this game all night long. And I liked it. A lot, even more than Devil May Cry 1.

 ...And then I played it last year and found it to be rather bland. But it's OK, because I'm gonna give it another go! I'm up to mission five with Lucia, and it ain't horrible. After making an assessment of my own I went back to my DMCHD review and found a lot of my newest opinions echoed, plus, a few complaints about how Dante and Lucia are so much alike, which I can't agree or disagree with yet. I mentioned how each playthrough lasted about 2:30 hours, which is kinda surprising considering I'm on mission 5 and only played an hour's time... but then again, maybe there aren't 23 missions this time around.

 Regardless, as of now I think I was a tad harsh on the game last year, I'm leaning more towards a 7.0 than the 6.0 I gave it. But there's more left to play before I can say for sure.

Review #467: Devil May Cry

 Dante will cry though.

The cover is terrible.

 Well, it's been one year since I played DMC 1 and... Everything I said still stands, the game has aged a lot but it's still really flippin' great.

 I don't really want to tread old ground so I won't dabble on the basics, but I will mention a few noteworthy things I picked up on my second playthrough. Firstly, the PS2 version of Devil May Cry is definitely harder than the PS3 HD port, not even Air Strike will get you out of this one. Still, the game is bloody fun to play, even if limited when compared to future games, so retrying doesn't hurt too much. That said, the game can be rather cheap, there're a few enemies that attack you as soon as the cutscene ends, and if you don't know it's coming... it's gonna hurt, particularly when it comes to Shadow enemies.

Meet the noobstomper, if you ain't ready he's gonna have you for breakfast.

 Something that hurts the game a lot is the fact that every boss, but the last one, must be fought three times. Three times! And if you get caught by Phantom you'll get to fight them a fourth time. The fixed camera angles can be intrusive at times, and the couple of first-person underwater segments are dumb, but they are short enough.

 Honestly, DMC3, DMC4 and DmC blow this one out of the water, however, it's still a fun game that shows its age. I'd advise to sticking with the HD ports, since not only does it look better, I also felt the difficulty was a bit more fair, not that it should make much of a difference since it's only a teeny tiny bit harder.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Devil May Cry(PS2)

 Back to the PS2 original.

Why so depressed? Dante m'boy, this ain't DMC 2.

 After basically cruising through the HD port of the game last year, here I return to the original PS2 game and... it's kickin' my butt. Like, I almost died on the first mission since the Marionettes did so much damage. And the first boss? Owned me 8 times. EIGHT TIMES. I defeated the first boss on my first attempt last year. And then I got up to the Shadow who started the fight by taking about a third of my health with one move before I even knew what was happening. And then it killed me.

 So I had to do some research, was the HD version actually easier? Most people said it wasn't... until one brave soul gave me the answer I was looking for: Yes, the HD version is easier because it's based on the Japanese PS2 release which was, you guessed it, easier.

 Game's still fantastic though.

Review #466: Gouketuji Ichizoku 2 / Power Instinct 2

 The game about the little old ladies duking it out with projectile prosthetic dentures.

It's not a horror game, but that old lady is out to get you.

 Welcome to the weirdest and best fighting game you've never heard about. Gouketuji Ichizoku features a weird sense of humor, including little old ladies that can turn young by kissing their opponent, a little boy that turns into a dog-man thing, a ridiculous and fantastic soundtrack featuring tracks with vocals and a fantastic combat system, all hidden beneath a layer of Street Fighter II-clone paint.

 The game is a bit lacking in modes, an Arcade Ladder, VS Player and VS Team player. That's it, no survival, no time attack, no vs CPU, no nothing, there aren't even unlockables and the arcade Mode endings are disappointingly short. The cast of characters is made up of 13 unique characters, but playing in Team VS you have a few more characters. Characters that transform(except Kanji and the Goketuji sisters) have been divided, so Kurara and Super Kurara are two very different characters, Kintaro and Pochy the same, and you also get Kuroko and Oume Gouketuji(A clone of the playable Otane Gouketuji) for a total of 17 characters.

That's the time when they go Super Saiyan.

 The game looks like Street Fighter II, with chubby, simple 2-D sprites, but foes with the 4-button set-up other fighters go, so you get two punches and two kicks. It's also much faster, the speed being somewhere between SFII and Darkstalkers, characters dash-step, back-step and double jump, on top of the game being pretty fast. Characters have the same amount of special attacks as well as a single super move that can be used when your super gauge fills. This gauge is filled by receiving damage, and once it feels your character will produce a blue aura that knocks the opponent back, if close enough, dealing a bit of damage, and making you invincible for the few seconds its active. The combat is fast and furious, the combo system is pretty tight and characters offer a lot of tools to get creative with.

 There is one fatal flaw however... The game comes in a disc, and we know how the PS1 tends to treat fighting games and loading times.... Well, anytime a character transforms the game will freeze for 5-6 seconds in order to load the temporary transformation... and once the time runs out, well, get ready for another loading pause. There're many characters with this ability, Kurara and Super Kurara, Kintaro and Pochy, Oume & Otane with their young transformations, Kanji with his weak transformation and lest we forget that Kurara's Super will transform anything it hits into a pig or a duck. Yeah, matches featuring Kurara can be insufferable. It's kinda depressing, since the game runs very smoothly and fighting feels fantastic, until someone decides to play a character such as Kurara...

Totally not Ryu, he's got legs like Chun-Li and Shoryukens like Ken.

 I might be a bit generous, but... but despite how little content it has, despite how horrible the mid-fight loading times are... the core game is top-notch. I think I might even like it more than Street Fighter II thanks to it marrying fantastic gameplay with a ton of quirky creativity that makes it stand out from other games. That said, I think emulating this game is a better alternative than the PS1 disc, since you don't get the horrible loading times.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Gouketuji Ichizoku 2/Power Instinct 2

  The best fighting game you've never heard about.

Games don't tend to have a character roster this diverse and original.

 Let's go back in time, about... 10 years back or so, there I was, at the flea market on a Sunday morning. While scavenging through bootleg PS1 and PS2 games I came upon this Japanese thingie. And it wasn't just another disc, it was a honest-to-goodness original Japanese PS1 game. On a Latin American flea market! A quick inspection of the back-cover revealed it to be a 2-D fighting game, so of course I had to have it. And I did.

 Fast forward a few hours time and there I was, placing the disc on my fat PS2 and lo and behold, I knew this game! I had played Power Instinct 1 on the PS1, and boy oh boy was I having a blast. I've been a fan of the Power Instinct series ever seen, sadly, most games are Japan only. But I'm gonna import PS2's Matrimelee any time soon!

 As far as this game is concerned, it definitely has stood the test of time. The fighting feels good and fast, controls are responsive(I think, not having a modded PS2 means I'm emulating this, and playing with a X360 controller!), graphics are pretty and the music is ridiculous and amazing at the same time. The only blemish I came upon so far would be the loading times. Any time a character transforms, or gets transformed into a pig by Kurara, the game will pause for about 5-6 seconds in order to load, and then again when they revert. It's a bit of a mood killer.

 Other than that, Gouketuji Ichizoku 2 is fantastic.

Review #465: Psychic Force 2

 As 90s anime as you can get.

Look at those 90s animu character designs!

 The Psychic Force franchise was a two game oddity that was born in the Arcades but made its way to the PS1, Dreamcast and PS2. It's a fighting game unlike any other, well, at the time anyways, that pits two different Psychiccers against each other inside a floating cube of energy. It translates into a 2-D Fighter with a twist: Characters are flying at all times, and you get to move in 8 different directions.

 The game offers Arcade Mode, an 8 opponent ladder, Story, another 8 opponent ladder but with dialogue and a few stills, Rraining, VS CPU, VS Player, Group versus, Survival and Psy Expand, a mode in which you can customize a character with moves from the rest of the cast. It's a decent selection of modes complimented by 16 different characters who are very different from each other. Some lay out traps, some have special grabs, some can stop time, some can teleport, etc. That said, the game certainly makes it a grind to unlock every character, you must finish both Story and Arcade mode with every character to unlock everything, which will take a while and feels like a grind.

There's a lot of flying, projectiles and anime hair in this game.

 Characters have both weak and strong attacks, depending on the distance between you and your opponent, this will either be projectiles or punches and kicks. There're plenty of super moves performed a la Street Fighter, with directional inputs, but these consume energy that must be recharged by holding L1. As for defense, you've got barriers or high-speed dodges. As you get hit your maximum total energy increases for the round, or you can charge energy and mash the analog stick/digital pad to sacrifice your health to increase your maximum energy. It works pretty well, but I felt like sometimes I wouldn't get the special moves I wanted to do, probably a side-effect of the 360 degrees of movement and positioning allowed.

 Fast-paced, easy to learn but with enough depth to keep casuals entertained, Psychic Force 2 is a rather fun offering. The combo system is a bit limited, but it's fun to try out new and different things. You have to keep in mind that combos aren't the bread and butter of this game, but rather positioning, energy management and learning when to dodge and how to respond to projectiles. It's a very different kind of fighting game, but a fun one if you give it the chance.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Psychic Force 2

 No, it's not another X-Men game.

 Psychic Force is the inspiration behind the fantastic Dragon Ball Z SuperSonic Warriors game....s(the sequel wasn't too good). I've finished a few Arcade Routes and it's pretty fun, although not quite as fun as I remembered it to be.The full 360 degrees of movement also means that, sometimes, pulling of moves can be a bit tricky.

 Basically, I liked:
 - The 90s anime aesthetics.
 - The simple, but fun, combat mechanics
 - The amount of unlockables
 - Production values

 What I didn't:
 - The 90s anime aesthetics(Double edged sword!)
 - Pulling off special moves can be tricky
 - Unlocking some characters is a bit tedious.

 It's pretty alright. Sadly, since I own an american PS2, I'm running this game on a emulator. Makes me sad.