Review #525: Samurai Shodown - Warriors Rage

 A sequel to Samurai Shodown 64 Warriors Rage. I don't even...

The Kuki brothers are fantastic successors to the feud between Haohmaru and Genjuro.

 Samurai Shodown is a bit famous in no small part due to it being the first 2-D weapon based fighting game. It was so good that it spawned 6 direct sequels, not counting special re-releases, as well as a 3-D rendition in Samurai Shodown 64. Warriors Rage is a sequel to the sequel of Samurai Shodown 64, a couple of games that never made it outside Arcades... which makes it all the more baffling if you don't know that, since the game's intro starts with a '...20 years later'. 20 years from when? The plot only gets more senseless the more you get into it. And it's pure SNK translation brilliance.

 Booting up the game offers a few different modes: Story, in which you take any one character throughout a ton of battles in order to get an ending, Attack Mode, which is a trial mode which can be used to power up your favorite character, Battle(VS Cpu or player) and a practice mode. The game is made up of 23 characters, but more than half of them are clones or pseudo clones, four of them being useless filler characters that don't even get special moves. As for the characters... this game features some of the best character designs the franchise has ever seen, and most characters are newcomers, Haomaru making an appearance as an old man and Hattori Hanzo's successor being the only familiar faces. During the Story Mode you'll occasionally come across characters interacting via text boxes... and it's glorious, SNK is infamous for their horrible translations, and this is no exception.

Yuda will make no sense unless you've learnt about Samurai Shodown 64. And even then his existence isn't properly explained.

 Gameplay is a mix of old and new. While the game made the jump to 3-D, there's no sidestepping, although the circle button works as a dodge button, in case you don't want to parry or dodge. Attacks come in three varieties, Strong, Weak and Kick and inputting different directions on the D-Pad before pressing an attack button produces Special and Super moves. As per the franchise's standards, combos are not the focus of the game, but rather waiting for openings and profiting from them. This is a slow paced game, so be wary. Many reviewers at the time took issue with it, but I enjoyed the game's pace. The way the life bar works is also relatively interesting, being divided into three segments. Once you lose all your health, it completely recharges but only up to the second tier. Lose all your health and your life bar recharges up to a single tier, lose all your health now and you lose the battle. It's an interesting mechanic, I think.

 One of the game's biggest issues comes from unlocking characters, unlocking all 23 means going through the game with 22 different characters, including the lame filler characters, which are weaker and more limited, moveset wise, than the others. And the problem with Story Mode... is that it's rather lengthy, not helped by the fact that the game loves to pit you on a survival match against up to 5 of these filler characters, back to back, without restoring your health. These take a long time to complete, and there's about two of these on any playthrough. Playing the game was fun, unlocking characters was not.

You'll have grown tired of Oboro's Amazons by the time you're done with the game.

 I loved my time with Warriors Rage. The mechanics are fun, and most characters are fantastic designs, plus, I love it when fighting games get daring enough to ditch old characters and replace them with newer ones. And I can see why reviewers had issues with the game back in the day, Fighters were becoming niche, and they wanted the next flashy, fast paced thing with the ability to string together long combos being the norm.
  8.0 out of 10

Review #524: Digimon Battle Spirit

 Girls just want to have fun and Digimon just want to battle.

Sure, you lil' Guilmon, sure, you do stand a chance.

 There was this weird little handheld called the WonderSwan Color that happened to get a ton of Digimon games, the one in the picture as well, but, as luck would have it, the Battle Spirit series would find a home on the Gameboy Advance as well. These were fighting games of sorts, with the objective being collecting more pellets than the opponent, as opposed to beating the data out of them.

 The game has only two modes 1P and 2P. For obvious reasons I couldn't try 2P, but I got 1P and it's a simple series of one on one battles until you get to the boss. In this game there are no lives or life bars, instead, every time you hit an enemy blue orbs will be knocked out of it, which you must then collect before they disappear in order to score points. The same is true if you get hit, albeit red orbs will be dropped. Either combatant can also pick up the very same orbs they dropped in order prevent the enemy from getting them. It's a weird idea, and one that lends itself to needlessly long bouts, as matches can't be shorter than 90 seconds. Matches take places on relatively large areas, filled with enemy fodder Digimon that exists to try to hit either player, as well as various platforms to hide or escape to in order to get some breathing room.

The final boss is hard until you figure him out, after which he turns into a total pushover.

 The character roster is alright. On your first booting up of the game you'll have access to Guilmon, Terriermon and Renamon, representing Tamers, Veemon and Wormon standing up for 02 and Agumon alongside Gabu... nope, alongside Sukamon being the reps from 01. Yes, Sukamon. Why, I do not know. That said, you can eventually unlock Impmon, the only 'mon without a Digivolution, Lopmon and BlackAgumon from 02 and a third Agumon that gets unlocked alongside a Gabumon, both having the same Omnimon Digivolution. Considering it's a GBA cart, they did a good job of getting main characters to represent their series, although Sukamon's presence is questionable to say the least.

 A button jumps, R button is a taunt and B is used to attack. If you hold up or dash before pressing B you'll get different attacks, and you can used directions and the B button to perform different attacks while on the air. Honestly, it's not a very fun game since the gameplay is relatively limited. The real kicker is that about a minute into the match Culumon will appear on the screen. The CPU always knows where he is, although the camera is so zoomed in on your character that you won't know where he is, the thing is... touching Culumon is what makes you Digivolve for a few seconds time. Whoever gets to digivolve basically wins the match, except the CPU since it's dumb, as every single hit will make the opponent drop 4 orbs, as well as being faster, with better jumps and more range on your attacks, some even having homing properties, all the while becoming invulnerable. It does't matter how much of a lead the winning player's got, if the opponent gets to digivolve and is mildly competent, he'll close the gap and win the match.

Even final-stage 'mons look brilliant.

 The one area of the game that deserves praise is the graphics. Characters were faithfully rendered in this simplified, cartoony style, and they look fantastic. Animation is great too, and they really managed to make each character come to life.... although it would've been nice if characters could've gotten a larger repertoire of moves.

 Digimon Battle Spirit leaves a lot to be desired, but if you're a fan of the franchise it might be an interesting rental(because apparently 'rentals' are still a thing. Because apparently you can still rent GBA games. Sue me.) at least. If what you wanted was a fighting game with multi-leveled arenas, there're better games out there, like the Rave Master GBA game, so if you don't care for the Digimon franchise... then there's nothing here for you.
 4.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Samurai Shodown - Warriors Rage

 The most underrated fighter on the PS1?

As per SNK's standards, character design is top-notch.

 I buckled up and prepared for the worse. Reviews hadn't been kind, and I had played Fatal Fury Wild Ambition, I knew that SNK's early 3-D days hadn't been the best. And so I went into training mode and picked that Kuki guy. Strong slashed caused this weird pause on the game, geeze, it wasn't looking hot.

 And thus I went into Story mode and picked Jin-Emon, because I always like getting the characters I like the least out of the way first. And.... and I started having fun. The game is really good. People complained about the three tiered-life bar being a gimmick, but it's an interesting one! Landing hits feels nice, the action isn't as fast as, say Rival Schools, but it's not as slow as your average Samurai Shodown game either. It's good. It's REALLY good.

 My one complaint the is the length of the Story Mode. The fights drag on and on and on, you even have to face a few opponents twice and, sometimes, 5-man gauntlets. The story mode shouldn't have been so bland.

Review #523: Digimon Rumble Arena 2

 Super Smash Digimon.

Greymon wins every time. Every time!

 Do you remember Digimon Rumble Arena? You probably don't, it was this little 1 on 1 2-D fighting game starring Digimon on the PS1. Well, Bandai took a completely unrelated Digimon game and localized it as a sequel, which is rather fitting since it's sorta similar... even if it's more of a Smash Clone.

 As previously stated this is a Smash Bros. clone, meaning that battles include up to four different combatants, taking place on relatively large, 2-D environments, featuring stage hazards as well as a few power-ups to change the tide of battle in your favor. Although, to be fair, there aren't many different power ups in this game. There're only three different modes: Arcade, a 8-stage ladder where you'll unlock every character, stage and ruleset, VS, in which you can battle up to three other players, CPUs or a mix of both under a decent variety of rules(Basic Timed matches, KO matches, to more bizarre rules like collecting the most digi eggs or capturing Culumon for points.) and lastly a Practice mode.

Digimon on the Wild West. I guess that makes sense.

 There were a few short sights when it came to designing the game. For instance, you can't have mirror matches since no two player can play as the same Digimon, which is very lame. And for as many quirky rulests that you can play under, there's no way to play in teams, it's always a free for all in here. Your mileage may vary on the character roster, you get all 8 classic Digimon from Adventure 01, but only Veemon represents Adventure 02 and only Guilmon represents Tamers. There're a few Frontier Digimon, the series that was on TV at the time, as well as an unlockable Omnimon and Duskmon from the movie, lastly, we get Black versions of Guilmon, Agumon and Gabumon, each having at least a single different attack from their normal counterparts. Most characters get two Digievolutions, starting on their Rookie form, to their Champion form and then their Mega.. or Ultimate if they didn't have a Mega on their show. Character balance is a bit iffy, particularly since most unlockable characters stay on their Mega form, but you can tinker with handicaps to even the odds.

 First thing to take into account is that like most Smash Clones... it feels a bit cheap. Physics don't feel quite right, as if everything lacked weight. The game isn't the most beautiful thing either, featuring some rather ugly animations. Regardless, you get a normal attack button, with X, that can be couple with different directions to produce different attacks, and a special attack button, Square, that can produce three different special moves. You can also grab enemies with Circle, jump with X or block with R1. Landing hits makes enemies drop digi-eggs which, when collected, increase your digivolution gauge, fill it to the top and you can press R1 to digivolve and get an entirely different moveset. Once you get to your final Digivolution, filling the gauge is done to perform an Ultra attack. Be careful, if you lose a life you drop a digivolution stage back.

Your mileage may vary on the character roster. Hopefully you enjoyed season 01!

 It's not the best Smash clone around nor the best Digimon game out there, but if you enjoy the franchise you'll probably get a kick out of it. It's kinda sad that they decided to focus on adding quirky rulesets that nobody will ever play instead of giving us basics such as team battles or mirror matches, c'mon, everyone wants to have a Palmon VS Palmon VS Palmon VS Palmon! All in all, it's far from perfect, and it fails to get the physics just quite right, but most of the basic gameplay feels relatively well, if a bit low-budget-y.

 6.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Digimon Battle Spirit

 More Digimon!

Poor Guilmon doesn't stand a chance against Mega-level Wargreymon.

 Yeah... there's more Digimon coming up on this blog! Battle Spirit is a game that I played quite a bit on emulators back when I was younger. I don't remember liking it too much, but it was certainly memorable.

 I've already cleared the game with two 'mons, and the game is... alrightish. The character roster is great, the graphics are beautiful and the core game is decent... it's only that whoever gets the Digivolution basically wins the game. It's not even funny. There's also a single single player mode which is just ridiculous.

 Basically, it's got charm, it's got style but it's got no substance.

Review #522: Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(Nintendo DS)

 After these games, Ubisoft did seem to forget about the Prince...

The Prince won't even smile on the DS' cover, despite the kiddy art direction.

 Not content with trying to revive the Prince on home consoles at the time, Ubisoft gave it another go on the DS. For those not in the know, the Prince had had two appearances on the DS before, the misguided Battles of Prince of Persia and The Fallen King. The Forgotten Sands on the DS takes after the latter, a game that was welcomed with very low scores and much scorn, both due to its silly aesthetics and stylus-only controls.

 You play as our beloved Prince, having fallen victim to a cult's ceremony which robbed him of his memories. Luckily, he comes across his blade, which is possessed by a friendly djinn who'll aid the Prince throughout all 40-or so stages. The story is barely present, although it has a few nice pieces of artwork. Sadly, the game's graphics are very... childish, you play as a cute, tiny version of the Prince as he defeats other cutesy enemies while avoiding razor-sharp blades.

Even when swarmed.. the game is relatively easy.

 The game is played entirely with the Stylus, for good and bad. The game feels very automatic as a result, since you just tap and hold to the right or left of the Prince and he'll automatically run there, automatically jumping over any gap on his way, or run on walls when needed. You'll also need to roll, by double tapping on the screen, which barely works when needed, as well as jump from wall to wall, which sometimes the Prince has trouble realizing that you want him to jump from the wall he is clinging to. Controls work about 85% of the time, which frankly is something to be proud about. The developers deserve some praise for managing to cram so many of the Prince's actions onto the stylus, you'll be doing a lot of stylish platforming, like jumping from moving pole to moving pole and then land on a platform and then quickly wall jumping before the ground falls beneath your feet. A lot of the excitement from the console game's parkour segments has been replicated here, which is nothing short of fantastic.

 The game fares a bit worse on the combat department, the game will read your slashes as taps most of the time, which will make you vault over the enemy instead of slashing him. Not that it really matters since combat is so easy, like most of the game. You also get a few Time powers, like slowing down time or rewinding time, but the latter is a bit wonky, to say the least. The game's rewind length is hard to pinpoint, so sometimes it won't be able to go as far back as you need to save yourself. Another time, after rewinding time, it propelled me beyond the stage's bounds, which made me die upon falling back to the ground. It feels very janky, like it needed more polishing. There's also an ungodly amount of waiting, since the game will engage in short, but numerous and unskippable, cutscenes almost every single time that a door closes or you step on a switch, just to show you what has happened... even if the door that closed or opened is directly in front of you. It sounds like a small nit pick, but the frequency of these do add up, making you wait quite a bit of time on the whole.

Razia is like Navi, but not as annoying.

 The game is made up of forty or so levels... but they are very short. You can unlock a secret stage on every chapter, for a total of four bonus stages, by going into the Start menu and... moving the camera towards a.... light source...? You don't even get a sound acknowledging that a new stage has been unlocked, you simply pan the camera to the left, on the stage select, and see if a new red dot has appeared. There's no bonus reward for clearing this, but you can collect more money to spend on upgrades or costumes. Not that you really need it, since money is relatively plentiful.

 The Forgotten Sands on the DS... is not as bad as it could've been. A bit too simple and automatic for my tastes, and the unnecessary, but mandatory, stylus-only control scheme is too imprecise for my tastes, even if it's better than a lot of other games that tried the same gimmick. While the kiddy artstyle is not a good fit for the series... it's not too bad of a game, and there's some fun to be had with it.
 5.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Digimon Rumble Arena 2 & Prince of Persia - Forgotten Sands(DS)

 One prince, two games. Nothing to do with each other though.

Ain't no Digimon without Greymon and Garurumon.

 I know for a fact that I used to play this one when I was younger... yet I've no memory of ever unlocking anyone besides Neemon! Regardless, I've been playing it a bunch and it's decent enough.  It does fall into the same pitfall that many other Smash clones do of having weird physics, which means that moving around, landing hits and jumping feels... weightless. At leas the game is fun to play, even if the roster is a bit lackluster. You get the 8 classic mons, Veemon, Digimon Frontier's Agunimon, fan-favorite Guilmon, black versions of the usual suspects(Agumon, Gabumon and Guilmon) and two digivolutions for each! As well as a few other mons that don't digivolve, like Omnimon and Duskmon. It's a decent roster.

 All in all, it's more fun than it deserves to be.

All versions of Forgotten Sands have the same cover. Am I to devise a sentence for each?!

 If there's one thing I hate it's tacked on stylus or motion controls, so it'd be safe to say that I'd hate this kiddy version of the Prince and it's dumb controls. But I don't. I mean, they are imprecise, yes, and I'm having some trouble with the game registering my attacks or my wall jumps... but it's rather impressive how well they managed to cram the Prince's acrobatics into the game.

 It's surprisingly not bad, you may even call me... impressed.

Review #521: Marvel Nemesis - Rise of the Imperfects(DS)

 Ya don't get any more imperfect than this.

EA's original characters have no place in the cover.

 Garbage. This game is garbage. This is a 1 on 1 arena-based fighting game that manages to get everything wrong. There's not a single good thing to find in here.

 The story is about this one guy collecting super heroes to create evil clones and evil counterparts. There're three modes: VS Player(Please don't subject anyone to this trash), VS CPU and Arcade Mode. Arcade Mode has a few character cut-outs between fights that try to tell a story and fail miserably. VS CPU instead forces you to play against the ugliest green recolors of every character, which sucks since you can unlock alternate classic costumes for the heroes. The cast of characters is alright, you get a few Marvel classics and a few original characters that... are pretty darn ugly. And they get ugly green recolors too!

The green recolors are uglier than Pokemon's green shinies.

 The game fails on every single level, but let's start with the controls. Moving your character around is very unwieldy, which is why you can press L to toggle auto lock-on... which is not a solution at all since the tracking sucks and this won't guarantee you landing your attacks. Speaking of attacks, even the basic B button combo moves your character all over the place, so good luck landing hits, melee or projectile. And you've a measly four attacks: B, B+R, A and A+R. That's it. And landing attacks is nigh impossible, although it's very easy to stun-lock your opponent with simple B button combos. And if you want to fly around or crawl on walls... you have to use the touchscreen. What the hell? Regardless, poorly implemented controls and poor gameplay.

 But what's even better? Quality Control is nowhere to be found. Graphical glitches abound, collision detection is terrible, you will land, and receive, attacks that shouldn't have hit all the time. One time I went directly through the floor to a black abyss simple because I got hit. Nobody playtested this thing, and this shouldn't have come out in this state. Heck, even if it didn't have any glitches, it shouldn't had come out period, because it's got a terrible foundation.

Not even Wolvie can make this piece of trash entertaining.

 There's absolutely no fun to be had playing this game, it doesn't even fall under the so bad it's good label. Just avoid it.
 1.0 out of 10

Review #520: Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones

 Two Princes, one dagger.

 Just learn to smile already!

 Ubisoft are not the kind of company that would let their cashcows lie still, so a new Prince of Persia was developed, with the aim of mixing what made Sands of Time and Warrior Within so good. They succeeded, for the most part.

 So, the Prince managed to save Kaileena from her fate and prevent the sands of time for being created. Too bad the Vizier has invaded the Prince's town, and... as luck good have it, slays Kaileena early on in the game, thus unleashing the Sands of Time yet again. Even worse, sand demons pop up everywhere, threatening the Prince's subjects, and the Prince himself gets a chain grafted on his arm, which allows the Sands to corrupt him and give birth to the Dark Prince, a being made up of his darkest desires that tries to take control of the Prince's body. The story is alrightish, but nothing to write home about. It's a farcry from the Sands of Time, although at least it's not as juvenile as Warrior Within.

The dark prince is the game's biggest missed opportunity.

 The game plays pretty much exactly like Warrior Withing but slightly better. Combat is exactly the same but enemies aren't as repetitive as before, still, combat is easily the game's weakest element. Platforming has been expanded upon, now the prince can stab his blade on a few panels to hang on air, he can crawl upwards or downwards when between two very close walls and there're a few new trampoline panels that make no sense in a realistic setting but they are allowed because it's a videogame. All the new abilities don't add too much to the game, but parkour is as fun as it's always been, and having new obstacles is very welcome. There's also a new stealth mechanic that involves using QTEs to instantly kill an enemy. Bosses too require QTEs, but they are not as bad as they could've been. They tried to disguise them, since you only need to press Square when the Prince's blade flashes during the cinematic, but they ain't fooling anyone: Those are QTEs.

 The game's main gimmick is the new Dark Prince, and it could've been so much more. He can't grab a secondary weapon but he is stuck with his chain and can be used with either triangle or circle, for a total of three different attack buttons. Enemies can't even block his attacks! Platforming is quite different too, since you use the Dark Prince's chains to propel yourself on walls or use as a chain hook. How amazing could've it have been if you had to switch between both Princes to accomplish tasks? But nope, you only change between forms when the game demands it. It's quite a missed opportunity.

Stealth allows you to bypass many of the game's boring combat scenarios.

 The Two Thrones introduces Chariot races, there're two of them as well as a 'special' one in which you ride a golem. These are boring and add nothing to the game, but at least they are short enough. They really failed to understand that the game is at its best when you are jumping around, performing incredible acrobatics, rather than these sad attempts at action. Still, at least they are short enough, so you don't have to endure their clunky controls for too long.

 There's not much else to say about The Two Thrones, if you've played any of the other PoP games you'll be right at home, and if you hated them... this one won't change your mind. The little polishing it got does make it a better game than Warrior Withing, but sadly it's missing the spark that The Sands of Time had.
 8.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Marvel Nemesis - Rise of the Imperfects(DS)

 You can't get much more imperfect than this game, that's for sure.

The cover is an omen of what's hidden behind it. Do not play this game.

 This game is absolute garbage. I played it for a few minutes while on the toilet, and it was enough to figure out how horrible the game is. Limited controls, wonky movement, wonky physics(I went through the floor once!) and horrible mechanics make for garbage.

 I can't stress enough how bad this game is. How the hell was EA OK with putting their brand on it??

Archile's Grab-bag: First o'2018 Edition

 NEW YEAR MEANS NEW PACKAGES WHICH MEANS MO' GAMES.

  Well, I guess I should get my trusty package-opening-knife to get the job done...

 Digimon World 4: Originally I wasn't planning on playing this one since it looked terrible. But then I learned it had a two player mode. And then I learned that it has the X-antivirus versions of certain 'mons so... here I am. Gonna be playing it soon, before I finish Grandia Xtreme even!

 Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(Wii): It's been a while since I played any Wii games, hopefully this one delivers... I'm somewhat looking forwards to playing it since I've heard some great things about it... but I also heard a few horrible ones. Seems a love it or hate it kinda thing.

 The King of Fighters 02/03: I've always been a fan of KoF, so I'm gonna try to play a few KoF games this year.

 Marvel Nemesis - Rise of the Imperfects: I've played it a bit, it's horrible.

 Prince of Persia - The Forgotten Sands(DS): This game is everything I hate about DS games: Stylus based and aimed at kids. I kinda want to play all PoP games this year, so I kinda had to get it. I will skip Prince of Persia Battles, however...

 Samurai Shodown - Warriors Rage: A game I've been most curious about, the character designs for this gave always caught my eye, so it's great to finally be able to play it.

Now Playing: Prince of Persia - The Two Thrones

 Warrior Within 2.0.

Well... he's still relatively serious.

 Man, it has to be said, The Two Thrones makes me feel like I'm playing another take on Warrior Within. After finishing Sands of Time, and going directly into Warrior Within, they felt like very different games... The Two Thrones reuses a ton of assets from the previous game, the combat is almost exactly the same, even if slightly better. People claim that this one matches the tone from Sands of Time... but that's wrong, I think, very early into the game the Prince gets a bladed chain grafted into his skin. And while dismemberment is gone, this Prince is vicious when it comes to killing his enemies.

 It seems like the Dark Prince are scripted sequences rather than letting you freely transform between both... which is a bit of a missed opportunity seeing how both have different skills when it comes to platforming. I dunno, I'm a bit... underwhelmed with this game. I just got out of the sewers and got the first life upgrade, which means I'm relatively early into the game. Hopefully it gets better.

Review #519: True Crime - Streets of LA

 Criminally underrated.

You've the right to remain dead.

 True Crime Streets of LA was created to take a piece out of GTA's pie, no doubt about it, but the end result was surprisingly competent. It received great reviews at the time, but it didn't score as high as GTA on most publications. Considering this game came out after Vice City... it's a true crime how underappreciated this game is, and in a few ways feels ahead of its time.

 You play as Nicholas Kang, a pastiche of every loose-cannon cop trope out there, who is the star of a generic pastiche out of every cop movie out there. Think Dead to Rights but with extra cheese. Is it enjoyable? Yes. Is it a good story? No way. The latter chapters included a few supernatural elements that came out of nowhere and don't really fit in with the rest of the game, as cheesy as it is, since it's not much of a tribute or a parody since it takes itself 100% seriously when it comes to these things... which is a bit surprising. The game is a bit light on extra content, there're only random crime occurrences to solve as well as a few optional challenges, which upgrade Nick's abilities, but the main story is pretty lengthy and features three different routes with three different endings. As a matter of fact, you can skip most missions if you wish, and if you fail a few you get alternate missions. The game is divided in episodes, so you can replay any mission at any time and jump through routes as you please.

You'll have tor rely on your minimap, since the full map sucks!

 For an open world game, it's pretty linear. You don't get to choose between which missions to do, each episodes has a string of missions for you to complete. Unless there's a time limit or you're confined inside a building, you're pretty much free to explore or 'borrow' cars as you wish, albeit there're no secrets to find. The game's in-game map is completely useless, it's a jumbled mess of streets, and it doesn't mark places of interest, such as hospitals or the facilities in which you can upgrade Nick's abilities, so you just have to ride around until you're close enough so that they appear on the minimap. At least there's a permanent marker directing you to your next objective.

 There're two important numbers you'll have to keep up with: Shields and Karma. Karma can be positive or negative, and it's affected by how you operate as a cop. Killing criminals gives you bad karma, as opposed to neutralizing them, for example. Karma doesn't play a big part in the game, it merely affects a few small mechanics, like making civilians attack you if you're a bad cop. Shields are earned as you solve crimes, so whether you kill or neutralize a criminal you'll still get shields, and these can be spent on facilities to upgrade Nick's abilities. You can choose guns, to enhance your shooting abilities, combat, to earn new moves, or driving, to earn new maneuvers. Protip, get the first few combat upgrades, to get Ground attacks, and then get every gun upgrade, since the last upgrade turn your limitless ammo-guns the best weapons in the game. You don't really need the driving upgrades or the finishing combat moves. There're also a few exclusive upgrades that are earned after finishing every mission in a chapter, but the only ones that matter are the gun upgrades, since they give your guns a better firing rate and more ammo capacity. End-of-chapter driving upgrades give you new cars, which you don't really need, and combat upgrades give you grappling moves, which are useless.

Civilians are always fast to comply. Just tap L1 and they'll leave their cars!

 You'v probably realized by now that the game made a big deal out of its three gameplay mechanics: Shooting, Driving and Combat. There's also Stealth, but nobody cares about it. And everything kinda works. Driving is a bit stiff and 'borrowing' cars can be a bit unresponsive, as sometimes Nick has a hard time deciding what to do when you press L1. That said, the driving itself is not too bad, and you can shoot in almost any direction while driving, as a matter of fact, you can hold R1 as you drive to enter manual aiming. As you drive. What other game of its era had that? Then there's on-foot shooting. You get unlimited ammo on your default guns, you can stick to surfaces by holding X, although it's a bit wonky, and you can enter manual-aiming in first person by holding R1 instead of just tapping R1 to shoot. At first the shooting is kinda garbage since Nick is a bit slow when it comes to auto-aiming, but get a few gun-upgrades and you'll be mashing R1 and bringing the entire neighborhood down. You can also pick up weapons from fallen enemies, but after you max out your guns they become a bit of a handicap. There's also slo-mo diving or rolling to evade bullets. The shooting is alright, although on closed-environments the camera can be a bit of a pain in the butt... but just mash R1 and you'll be fine. For whatever reason, sometimes Nick won't shoot when you mash R1, I think it has to do with enemies running on the side of whichever weapon Nick has(He always dual-wields) gone out of ammo, so he doesn't realize that he can shoot with his other arm. As a whole, shootouts are arcadey fun, but it's a bit janky.

 Then there's the combat... which is just button mashing. You mash X, Square or Triangle for Low, regular and high attacks. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the combat, but the animations are still relatively decent. Landing enough hits on an enemy makes them drowsy so that you can execute a special move on them. Circle can be used to grapple with enemies, but it comes out so slowly that they will easily evade it. The best moment to initiate a grapple is when they are drowsy... but why would you if special moves are so much more satisfying? As a whole, combat is pretty alright, definitely better than anything GTA 3, VC or SA had to offer. Lastly, stealth missions. The only problem with these is that sometimes you attacks don't come out. Holding Square or triangle as opposed to just tapping them seems to increase the chance of the attacks being carried out. It's a bit wonky, but it's not too bad. The camera can be a bit of a chore on these, but enemies give ample time to be subjugated after they see you before you lose the mission. They are pretty sure, so having to do them again from the start isn't too bad.

Once you unlock the best guns you won't need to dive, since enemies will go down in seconds flat.

 True Crime was definitely ahead of its time, and it was very ambitious. Everything it does, it does relatively well albeit suffering with a few hiccups... and that's the game as a whole: It's really good, but very rough around its edges. Still, I think it's easy to put up with its shortcomings since the game is so much fun to play. It also features a soundtrack made up of licensed rap, heavy rock and metal songs that fit the game oh so well. It's funny to think how much critics loved GTA and spurned other open-world games, specially considering how modern GTA games play more like True Crime than, well, classic 3D GTA games.

 Problems? It's got a few. But True Crime - Streets of LA is easily more than the sum of its parts. It's sad how the franchise died after a bad sequel.
 8.0 out of 10

Review #518: Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

 Game so edgy it cuts you with its dialogue.

Hopefully the prince will be smiling on the next game.

 Warrior Withing has earned somewhat of a bad name since the day of its release. It's been often cited as one of the worst cases of 'darker and grittier' for the sake of appealing to angsty teens and the such. But being dark and edgy... isn't necessarily a bad thing, and the tone shift is the least of the game's problems.

 Taking place a few years after the Sands of Time, the Prince finds himself prey to the Dahaka, a being that was unleashed the moment the Prince went back in time, and now the Dahaka wants the Prince's life. So he comes up with an idea: Travel back in time to before the sands where created and stop them from ever coming to be. The plot is interesting, and a few amusing things occur during the Prince's journey, however, characters have lost their charm. The Prince isn't as snarky as he used to be, being replaced by an eternal frowner, voiced by the glorious Robin Atkin Downes, and the rest of the characters... well, it seems as if a 12 year old was in charge of designing the females, because it's all about their breasts and butts.

Enemies block everything that goes beyond two hits, save for spinning attack combos.

 The game plays pretty much like the first one, melding combat with platforming and puzzle platforming, but the Prince's moveset has been expanded upon. Platforming is pretty much the same, the Prince can still run on walls until gravity brings him down, scale on a few surfaces and will have to jump from ruins to scaffolding to bars to what have you in order to get to his destination. Most puzzles in the game are about figuring out how to get to where you want to go. There's a few new additions, like slowing down your decent by shredding through a flag with your sword, using ropes to aid you, using your time powers to slow down time and get to a door before it closes or a few enemies that cling on to walls and must be slashed at the right time. Yes, the new additions are pretty shallow, but the previous game did this perfectly, and there was no need to fix what wasn't broken.

 Combat has been completely overhauled. Now the prince will wield his main weapon on his right and can pick up any other weapon with the left, albeit most secondary weapons will break pretty swiftly. There're more options in combat to, if you're fighting with a single sword you can grab enemies in order to strangle them or slash them, or you can use a wall to propel yourself against an enemy or even a column to spin with your sword around it. It sounds like the combat is fun, but... it's as dull as it used to be. You'll be using Square-triangle or square-square-triangle attacks most of the time because 80% of your enemies will block anything that goes beyond two hits unless it's a two-weapon spin attack combo. Either that or spam triangle+square in order to land free hits. Then there's also the fact that enemies can't be finished off with anything less than a three hit combo or a 'special' strike, like vaulting over their heads and slashing or grabbing them and slashing. It's boring. And bosses don't fare much better, you'll spend most of your time blocking and dodging before they open up their guard... or abuse the slow-down time mechanic. So, it's combat better than in Sands of Time? On paper yes, in practice... it's just as lame, since you'll end up cheesing enemies with the same techniques over and over again.

Abuse columns, enemies don't know that they can engage you outside it's area of effect.

 One thing to keep in mind before approaching Warrior Within is that it's a much harder game. While you had sand reserves to spare, which are used to rewind time in order to make up for mistakes, now you've got a paltry maximum of six reserves, and you only start with three and increase your maximum very slowly. Plus, defeating enemies does't guarantee a sand refill. Enemies and traps hit much harder than ever before, which makes tracking down the health upgrades a necessity. Don't feel too bad about using a guide, the game is relatively open ended, so you can basically backtrack and explore at your leisure, but these are VERY well hidden. You'll also have to deal with travelling to and back from the past, by using a few sand shrines scattered throughout the island. The in-game map is absolutely useless, so hopefully your memory is up to snuff. Oh, and shrines must be activated by doing a dumb mini-puzzle, based on trial and error, in which you have to press four switches in the correct order. And absolute waste of time that adds nothing to the game.

 Another thing to keep in mind... is that you should have two save files at all times. The game is notorious for its numerous game-breaking bugs. I didn't come across any of them on this playthrough, but I did when I was younger and I was forced to start a new file. As a matter of fact, the game feels somewhat sloppy. Sometimes when you jump against a wall the Prince may linger on the air while deciding how to collide with the wall. It never happened during platforming sections, it mostly did when I was trying to get to some place fast an started fooling around, so it's not like it will ruin your experience, but it feels sloppy as a whole. There's another instance in which you must defeat a giant miniboss, after which a ladder pops up and you go to the top floor. On the top floor there's a hidden checkpoint and three tough enemies. If you die here, which I did, you don't have to defeat the boss again... but he will respawn below you, and you'll be hearing his noises and the healthbar will appear on the bottom of the screen. Does it affect your progress? Nope, but it's further proof of how poorly tested the game was. As a matter of fact, when I arrived here I was out of sands and running low on health, and there's a health upgrade on this top floor, so I needed to defeat these enemies in order to get enough sand(Since the door shuts down quickly unless you slow down time) to enter the chamber... on one of my retries, these three enemies didn't spawn and I was forced to kill myself.

The prince is a pirate now.

 People claim that Warrior Within is a bad game because it got darkier and edgier. They are wrong, Warrior Withing is pretty good. The problem is... Sands of Time did everything this game does better. Not only that, there's so many bugs or small issues that make the game feel like it was rushed, even though the game works when it needs to... well, most of the time. With a bit more time in the oven, the game could've been as good as the first one, because the basics are here and the combat is slightly better than it used to be, at least there're more things to abuse so you can do something else besides vaulting.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: True Crime - Streets of LA

 Being a videogame, it makes it fictional crime. Just sayin'

The red GH label... actually kinda fits the cover.

 I used to love this game. I played it on the PS2, never finished it but liked it so much that when my PS2 died I bought it on PC, all four discs, and cleared it 100% on all routes. It was probably my favorite open world game at the time, and I realize why: The combat is quite competent, even if a bit clunky.

 I'm all the way to chapter 3 and that's pretty much how I feel about the entire game: It's pretty good, but very rough around the edges. Driving is acceptable, but a bit stiff. Shooting is alright, but taking cover could've been smoother. Combat is fun, but repetitive.

 What I mean to say is... True Crime's still got it.

Month Overview: January 2018

 Tally:
 Shadow of Rome 8.0
 Rise of the Argonauts 7.5
 God Hand 9.0
 Musashi - Samurai Legend 6.5
 Spec Ops - The Line 8.0
 Fear Effect 4.0
 Fear Effect 2 - Retro Helix 5.0
 Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time 9.0


 It's 2018 baby! Even though I started working and a programming course, meaning I'm out from 9 AM 'till 10 PM, I still managed to play a fair amount of games. Chiefly, I finally played the Fear Effect franchise!.... but I was not impressed, I can appreciate how mature and original its plot and characters were for its time, but it has aged very, very badly. I also got around God Hand and was pleasantly surprised, about how good it was, and surprisingly relieved at how overrated its difficulty was.
 I also started the PoP franchise, because Grandia Xtreme was so dull, and I was surprised at hot... lame I'm finding Warrior Within, considering how much I used to love it. And it has nothing to do with the tone shift, I'm quite OK with it actually. On the flip side, I absolutely adored the Sands of Time, despite its shortcomings.


 Runner-up:

 God Hand was bloody phenomenal. The humor was great, and funny if a bit offensive. The characters where interesting, ridiculously so. But the gameplay was weird... but amazing at the same time. It's a surprisingly deep game, albeit one that can only appeal to fans of beat'em up games.

 Game of January 2018:

 Alright, so it was a hard choice between God Hand and Prince of Persia, but PoP won the premise that it did so much more. God Hand excelled at the one thing it did: Beating up thugs, but Prince of Persia gave us an engaging adventure, fantastic platforming and OK combat, alongside some pretty unique mechanics. As far as I'm concerned, The Sands of Time is every bit as good as it once was.

Now Playing: Prince of Persia - Warrior Within

 The Prince's teenage rebel phase.

Alright, now the Prince is even MORE serious.

 I'll always wonder why people automatically assume that dark and gritty means that it's bad. Alright, so Warrior Within tries hard to be dark and edgy, with buxom babes, cursing and maiming... but that doesn't make it bad, particularly when it polishes and expands upon the first game.

 The Sands of Time? Excellent, but with passable combat. Warrior Within has the same parkour, but with a few new tricks, has better combat, I'd call it good, and expands on the sands powers. Sure, the story is not as good, although the set-up is more original, and yes, its portrayal of women seems as if straight out of a 12 year old's mind... but the gameplay is more of the same but better.

 Regardless, I used to love Warrior Withing when I was younger, I played this game over and over and over again. Even though on my first playthrough I was victim to the Sand Wraith bug, which turned me into the Sand Wraith way before it should've and it meant that I could advance through the game... at to a certain point. Just in case I'm playing with two savefiles this time around! Still, as soon as I found out that I was stuck for good, and I kept playing as the Sand Wraith because I didn't notice I wasn't the Prince any more before it was too late, on the off chance that I would be able to finish the game... and I couldn't. But I didn't care, I immediately started the game again and got to the end. And I loved it. Hopefully I'll be as in love now as I was back then by the time I finish it.

Review #517: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

 As if time hadn't passed at all....

The Prince's shirt gets torn to shred as the story advances.

 The original Prince of Persia was a bit of a landmark as far as videogames are concerned, yet its first jump to 3D was pretty much terrible. A few years later Ubisoft would acquire the IP and deliver The Sands of Time, a game that continues to influence other games to this day with its then-unique blend of combat and parkour.

 You play as the Prince, victim of the Vizier's treachery, having unleashed the Sands of Time on the Sultan's abode. The sands have turned everyone but him, the Vizier and the captive Farah into sand demons, so now he and Farah team up to stop the Vizier. Luckily, he is armed with the Dagger of Time, a weapon that allows him to manipulate time to his will... as long as he has enough sand stored. The story is pretty cookie-cutter, but the interactions between the Prince and Farah are pretty adorable. Plus, even though the story is nothing special, it's still well told and it's an enjoyable trip. The story is told to us by the Prince, so every time you die he'll exclaim that 'that's not what happened!', which surprisingly doesn't grow old. A simple, but enjoyable tale that runs about 6 hours long... which would be an acceptable length if only the game wasn't so good that you just want more.

Heavy enemies require block-and-counterattacking to be defeated.

 Prince of Persia is the precursor to Assassin's Creed, as a matter of fact, the first Assassin's Creed began life as Prince of Persia: Assassins. But I digress, what I meant to tell was that this game did the parkour thing before any other game. This is a linear game, so you'll constantly be moving forwards and only forwards, although it's in your best interest to explore a little so that you can increase the maximum amount of health and sand you can have. Heck, you can also unlock the very dated first Prince of Persia game, although you'll need a guide to do that, since the wall you must break is pretty well hidden.

 The platforming in this game is pretty much fantastic, the Prince remains one of the most nimble characters out there, he can run on walls as long as momentum allows him, jump from wall to wall, cling to ledges, spin on bars and a few other nifty tricks. The game puzzles come in the form of figuring out how to traverse the environment, as you pull trick after trick to get to where you need to go. If you mess up, which you will every now and then, you can spend a sand tank to rewind time with L2 to before you screwed up that jump and save yourself. The game is pretty lenient with this mechanic, if you die there's ample time to press L2 before the retry screen pops up. Word of warning, as great as the time rewind is, don't grow to dependent on it, as the last few stretches of the game part the Prince with said ability.

The game could've used less enemies and more jumping instead.

 And then comes the game's weakest link: Combat. You use square to slash with your sword, R1 to block, X to vault over enemies(Or roll around) and triangle to use the dagger, and you can spend a secondary sand gauge to turn enemies into sand and do quick work of them. The combat is very simple and rather dull, the game throws waves upon waves upon waves of enemies and combat never gets too interesting. Enemies must be hit with the dagger when they are downed in order to finish them off completely, which also refills a sand tank in the process. The thing is... the vault move is so good that it downs pretty much any enemy that can't counter it instantly, so there's no reason not to use it... unless you want to slowly hit an enemy's guard until they decide to counterattack so that you can block their move and counterattack yourself. Heavy enemies later in the game grow immune to your vault so you'll have to resort to counterattacks to win. You've also got the Mega Freeze move, called Haste in the instruction booklet, which requires your full sand reservoir to use, as well as the secondary sand gauge, and turns every enemy into sand for a short while, so you just mash square and easily wipe them out. Mind you, the combat can get a bit dull, but it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

 Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time hasn't aged a single day, it's every bit as good as it once was. The combat can grow a bit stale, but the parkour is fantastic, and exploring the palace while the Prince and Farah banter is great. This game is one of the finest adventure games out there, and it won't be going obsolete any time soon.
 9.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time

 More like 'Almost done: Prince of Persia - The Sands of Time'

Why so serious?

 So, I got bored with Grandia Xtreme, since 'Xtreme' is the last thing that game is, so I decided to take the Prince fo a spin. I was only gonna play until I hit 20%. But then until I hit 25%.... until I got over 60% of the game done!

 As far as the Prince goes, I had a very brief stint with the original PC game, which I never liked, and I played a little bit of The Sands of Time, I can't remember why I stopped playing it, must've been by the time my PS2 was already dying? That said, I did play Warrior Within, on my PC, and... I kinda loved it.

 Yeah, yeah, the Prince was turned emo, edgy and angsty... but why is that bad? Why are edgy makeovers necesarilly bad? You can have your kid-friendly games, but what's so bad about games that try to appeal to an older demographic?... even if they do it by being as immature as they can with breasts and blood. But alas, this is about Sands of Time and not Warrior Within!

 ....but I think I needn't say anymore, I played way, WAY more than I intended to. The combat is kinda mediocre, but the platforming is ace, even to this day.

Review #516: Fear Effect 2 - Retro Helix

 It's called Retro because it's a prequel, get it?

Some things never change. Like Eidos' penchant for unnecessary fanscervice.

 My experience with Fear Effect 1 was a bit disappointing, but I wasn't done with the franchise, oh no, there's a sequel/prequel left for me to play. Actually, there was one, because I'm just done with it and... it's more of the same, for better or worse. Mostly for the worse.

 Remember how the cast of main characters was easily the best part about the first game? Wouldn't it be nice to get to know them better? Well, the game delivers... a bit. The first half of the game has you playing as Hana and her lover, newcomer Rain Qin, as both girls get embroiled in far more than they bargained for. If you liked Deke or Glas... you're for a disappointment, since, as previously stated, you're stuck with Rain for half of the game, and she's kinda bland. Both Deke and Glas make their official appearance halfway through the game, but you only get to play as Deke on the first half of a single disc, which is completely ridiculous. On the whole, we get to learn more about Hana as a character, we learn Glas' past, we learn a tiny bit more about Deke and we're introduced to Rain. As for the plot itself, it's the same pseudo futuristic modern day era meets Chinese mysticism. And it works well. The game is longer than the first one, and there're many more cutscenes, as well as more, well, plot, than in the previous game. As far as how good the story is... it's about as good as the first one, but it feels like they should've done more with Glas and Deke... or at least make Rain half as interesting as any of the other three.

Hana is as great a character as you remember her.

 The game plays exactly like the first one: Fixed camera angles, tank controls, stiff movement and unreliable dodging, clunky real-time inventory, passable auto-aim and the 'fear gauge' doubling as health bar that goes up or down depending on things like doing well in combat or being around enemies for too long. It's practically the same game, but now with new environments. I will grant them that they made the collision detection much better, there were fewer times, albeit it still happened rarely, in which my shots would hit an invisible wall as opposed to my target. There's a new option for '3D movement' but it's very clunky, so just stick with the tank controls.

 The game feels much fairer too, don't get me wrong, some encounters still feel like luck-based affairs, but they are rarer, since your characters seem to be able to take more punishment, and there're more weapons available. Dying and retrying was a pain in the rear in the previous game since there were long loading times, but that's a thing of the past, retrying is now instantaneous. The game is quite longer too, each disc has two 'parts'... although the game will have you shuffling discs all the time, you go from disc 1 to disc 3(!!!) to disc 2 to disc 1 again to disc 4 to disc 2 again... you'll have to swap discs at least 8 times, so don't get too comfortable on your chair!

Rain, the new addition, is such a boring character... and you're stuck with her for half the entire game.

 The game has more than double the amount of puzzles the first game had, but... they have aged horribly, requiring almost Sierra Adventure Games-ridiculous levels of thought processing to solve them. Just a tip, play the game with a guide at hand. it makes for a much more enjoyable experience rather than running around trying to use every single item on every single interactive object you can find. Some don't even make sense, like why would you try to fix your shovel by melting the goblet and then pouring it on top...? Argh! Trust me, don't bother trying to solve them, just keep a guide close by.

 Fear Effect 2 is definitely better than the first game: Environments aren't as pixelated, the shooting has been tightened, the difficulty is more balanced and it's a longer game... but the game is still horribly dated, it still looks ugly and grainy, the shooting is still janky at worst and passable at best, some moments still feel as if they require more luck than skill and the game might be longer, but you have to swap discs all the time! If you're not too sure if you'd like the franchise, I'd suggest starting with this one, it's a prequel so it makes sense to play it first and you don't need to have played the first one and it's not as unfair as the first one. And, if you end up not liking it, at least you played the game at its best, so you won't have to endure the age-induced sloppiness of the first!
 5.0 out of 10