Review #816: Ridge Racer 7

 And now, let's take a dip into the future of Ridge Racer.

 It's no secret that I harbor no love for the Racing genre. I have a soft spot for Outrun and will never say no to a round of Mario Kart, but driving ain't my thing. I'm horrible at Ridge Racer, and that didn't change with Ridge Racer 7. But that doesn't matter, because this game is amazing. I liked the game a lot after I tried out my hand at a few Arcade races, but after playing the original games I couldn't help but admire how far the series came.

  The modes in this game are fairly predictable. There's a Grand Prix mode, which is actually a single player campaign in which you race for money and Fame points. The more grand prixes you win, the more Manufacturer Trials you open up, clearing manufacturer trials allows you to purchase cars and customization parts for your cars, and you'll also open up UFRA challenges, which are races that might involve a bit more than just landing first. Sometimes, anyways. There's an online mode, which, y'know, is dead, there's a Global Time Trial mode, that can thankfully be played offline, there's Arcade, in which you can race with preset cars in single or multi track formats. Word of advice, there are no difficulty settings and the AI is relentless, so... get good. It can be played in two player mode. Then there's also UFRA Challenge which allows you to download event races.... which is also dead since the servers are long gone. The last pertaining tab on the main menu is "Machine Connector" which is actually the place in which you can customize your cars. The game offers about 40 cars, which I think is a bit of a lie since some cars are just faster versions of previous cars, as well as 22 tracks that can be mirrored. More than one track? Oh, how far we've come!

 Cars look fantastic, and the fact that you can customize even up to their paint job is pretty dope. The environments are a bit simpler, but they are very pretty so they make up for their lower poly count thanks to the artistry. The game runs pretty well for the most part, but there were a few uncommon bouts of slowdown when many cars were on the screen at the same time, nothing to worry about. The soundtrack, save for a few stinkers(Which I searched up on YT and they have some fans anyways!), is brilliant.

 So, the focus on drifting is still here, and the basics have changed so little that you can even play with the digital pad in case you hate yourself or want to dabble in nostalgia. It's gotten a bit more nuanced, however, since cars can now have any of three types of Drifting: Standard, which is how the played before, Dynamic, which is a bit better at steering through the drift and Mild which reduces drifting for more stability. I really liked Mild cars and stuck with them. There's a new addition, which may have made its debut in a previous game but its pretty new to me, Nitros. Drifting fills your three-tiered nitro gauge, however, how much it fills depends on the sharpness and length of the curve, so you can't just drift willy nilly because it will only cost you speed. You can customize the Nitro gauge too, so you could have a four tiered Nitro gauge, or a two-tier gauge with longer bars as well as a few other types. This matters and will affect how you play, because you can't use a Nitro until it's completely full, and with some gauges you can even store multiple nitros in order to use a Double or even a Triple nitro boost. There are even more nuances to this mechanic, for instance, you can't fill the gauge while using nitro, but if you drift on a curve JUST as your nitro wears off you'll get an extra juicy refill. I really liked this Nitro mechanic, and I feel like it adds a lot to the formula without getting in the way of what Ridge Racer is all about. Using the slipstream, meaning driving behind another car in order to gain a boost of speed by having it break the wind in front of you is also a thing now.

 The Arcade Mode is pretty relentless, and the Grand Prix can be a bit tough. I had to restart some races multiple times before I finally finished on the first places which would grant me more points. It is a tough game, at least for people that don't play racing games often, and there's very little you can do to tailor the difficulty to your abilities besides turning Automatic Transmission on. While it can be scary, it's also a load of fun, so I didn't really mind having to retry some courses oh so many times.

 Well, I can safely say that Ridge Racer 7 is among my favorite Racing games. I haven't played many of them, true, but I've played a fair amount, and I can easily put this one next to Outrun 2, if that even counts as a Racer. I've read that Unbouded changed the gameplay a lot, so it's gonna be interesting seeing where Namco took the series after this one.
 8.5 out of 10

Review #815: WWF In your House

 Now, if I could get this disc out of my house...

 Every time a company strikes gold they inevitably try again, and that's how WWF In Your House happened. It's... well, it's more of the same. General consensus seems to agree that it's a worse more of the same, but... I'm not too sure about that, I think this game has a few things going for it.

 The wrestler roster has been bumped up to ten. The Undertaker, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels are joined by superstars like Ultimate Warrior, Goldust and a very early Triple H, long before he used the Triple H moniker. The other new guys are Vader, Owen Hart, Ahmed Johnson and the British Bulldog... names that, sadly, mean nothing to me. Considering I can recognize more wrestlers in this game.... I was much fonder of this roster. Each character has their own ring, they look ugly, but at least we've got more than one ring. Speaking of ugly, the new digitized sprites seem much less detailed and more pixelated, and am I crazy or is Owen Hart's sprite tiny? He looks incredibly out of place. Meanwhile, Triple H is already larger than the others, which makes Owen look even more minuscule. ON the flip side, every time you beat the Arcade ladder you get a 5-8 second long highlight reel clip of your wrestler which is a nice, if small, extra.

 Gameplay is pretty much exactly the same, two punches, two kicks, running, head locks, a block button and a very glaring missing movelist. Power ups were added, and can be turned off, which come in the form of White power ups and Red power downs. They are random and sorta lazy, they might heal you, stun you, stun your opponent, make you stronger, make you slower... and you don't really get a clear sign of what you got, except for the stunners. The two unfair Arcade ladders from the original game return, but there's a new 10 match 1-on-1 ladder, thank god, and you can play with up to four players with a multi-tap, not bad!

 Look, it's more of the same. A more recognizable roster made it more inviting for me, but still not enough to make me care about it. The controls still feel sluggish and I hate not having a readily available complete moveset, not even on the instruction booklet, which probably soured me on the game since I had to struggle to guess my character's reversals and headlock throws. When it's all said and done, I'm sorry to report that I can't say I enjoyed either of these games, but I'll give the edge to this one, if only because the roster was more recognizable to me.
 3.0 out of 10

Review #814: Ridge Racer Revolution

 Oh, here's the second track!... but where are the rest??

 Well... it's more Ridge Racer. Ridge Racer Revolution is little more than an upgraded version of the original, to the point that it's almost ridiculous how small this thing is. That said, it's still fun as hell, and pretty much every change they did was for the better. Except for the soundtrack.

 Once again, one track and one track only is all that you get, but you get six different tweaks: Beginner, Mid and Expert versions, as well as unlockable mirrors of each. Each different level adds a new part to the track, so after playing the beginner course you'll have played 80% of the game. Each track can be played in either Race(3 laps), Time Trial(VS CPU) or in an endless Free Run mode. It's a better set up than the original, that's for sure, and I appreciate how every version of the track adds something on top of the other, unlike the original in which some variations only upped the max speed. I'd also like to mention that this new track is more detailed and more fun to race in than the one in the original, so bonus points for that. It's also a bit more challenging. And, y'know, despite it only being one track, it has a nice assortment of pieces and panoramas to make it interesting to look at and race on. The graphics as a whole are a bit better, but on the other hand, the soundtrack isn't as amazing. It's still a really good soundtrack, like 9/10 instead of the original's 10/10.

 There's a multiplayer mode now.... if you own two Playstations, two copies of Ridge Racer Revolution and the fabled link cable, so it might as well not be there at all. There's still no analog support, and, once again, the brunt of the playable vehicles are hidden behind a brief Galaga 88 loading minigame. There's a cheat to automatically destroy them all this time around, which is welcome.

 And that's pretty much it. Same fantastic gameplay, a slightly better set-up and another single, but more entertaining, course to race through. It's still far from being a good product in this day and age, but I'm more comfortable vouching for this one since it feels like it has slightly more content than the original. And once again, scoring the game is tough, because as far as gameplay is concerned, it checks all boxes, but there simply isn't enough content here to justify a purchase.
 4.0 out of 10

Review #813: WWF WrestleMania - The Arcade Game

 Mortal Kombat gone Wrestling.

 I've never been much of a fan of digitalized sprites, however, WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game looked so weird that it intrigued me, so of course, I went ahead and got both it and its sequel. What makes it so weird is that this game isn't your average fighting game, it's more akin to Mortal Kombat, with life bars and a block button, as well as a very similar sense of humor. Undertaker can summon ghosts, Bam Bam Bugalow can throw fire punches and Ramon Razor can turn his arms into deadly blades. It's a weird game, alright?

 This is a straight up port of the Arcade original, without any bells and whistles. You get 8 wrestlers: The Undertaker, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Yokozuna, Bam Bam Bugalow, Lex Luger, Ramon Razor and Doink. Wrestling wasn't a thing over here, even though curiously enough, Hulk Hogan was a household name, so... I could barely recognize anyone besides The Undertaker, so the roster might resonate a bit more with American households, or people big into wrestling during the 90's. Single Player Mode is made up of two Arcade Ladders, but you can also play Co-Op and Deathmatch with another player. It's... it's quite lacking. And the Arcade Ladder is quite annoying, one of them starts off with 1 on 1 matches, but then you have two one VS two matches and ends on a one VS three match, while the other ladder is even worse, starting off with one VS two matches, then two one VS three matches and ends with a fight against all 8 characters. It's tough and it's unfair and I recommend turning off blocking for this mode.

 The game has a very Mortal Kombat five-button setup: Punch, Kick, Super Punch, Super Kick and Block. Punch+Kick makes your wrestler run, while S. Punch+ S. Kick allows you to grab opponents... with a specific few characters. Other universal inputs are forward-forward-S. punch to get your enemy in a headlock, back-back-S. punch to throw your enemy towards the rope and back-back-punch to throw your enemy into the ground. You can also get out of the ring and get on top of the torn buckles to produce jumping attacks. There's a combo gauge that lets you use Super Moves, but the instruction booklet is no help and there's no in-game moveset, and I couldn't care enough to google them, so I wasn't able to pull off any of them. Even so, controls didn't seem very responsive, and the fighting system was a bit clunky, so I didn't have much fun. That said, I'm sure it's better against other players, since the CPU just isn't fun to fight in this game, they react to fast to your head-locks, producing reversals before you can try to figure out what input combination works with the Wrestler you picked.

 I'm pretty sure this game has a small cult following behind it, but sadly, I just didn't enjoy it much. Combat in the game is bit wonky and unresponsive, although not altogether bad, just subpar, and playing solo is more of a chore than anything. I give them props for the idea, however, and while I wasn't so fond of the end product, I'm glad that such a weird idea can live on as a game.
 3.0 out of 10

Review #812: Ridge Racer

 It's RIIIIDGEEEE RACEEEEEEEEEER! ....but where's the rest of the game?

 So, last year I decided to give Ridge Racer a try which meant I bought a ton of Ridge Racer games. I decided to start with 7, and spoilers, it's pretty darn fun, but the original piqued my curiosity so I started it shortly after. And I was done with it 2 hours later.

 The game offers a single track with 7 variations. Beginner, which has a slow max speed and a 2 lap race, Mid, which raises the max speed and makes it into a 3 lap race, Expert, which once again raises the top speed and adds another very sinuous part to the track and Time Trial which raises the top speed even further but turns it into a race against a single AI opponent. Getting first place on all four variations will unlock mirrored versions of each. And... yeah, that's pretty much it. It's just a simple racing game against 11 racers, while trying to make it onto checkpoints too since you can lose if the Time limit expires, even before anyone reaches the finish line. There isn't even a multiplayer mode, this is a single player racing game. You get 4 cars to start with and can unlock another 8 by... beating the Galaxian minigame upon start up. The game is so small that it's completely loaded into memory while the brief Galaxian minigame runs, and once that's done you can swap out the CD with a Music CD to play your own tracks, which doesn't work very well and... why would you? This game's soundtrack is AMAZING. As for the graphics... it's pretty rough and undetailed, pretty telling of a very, very early PS1 game.

 The game's main mechanic is its drifting, you have to let go off the accelerator, or make a short break, turn your car and then go full throttle. The instruction booklet is of little help, but Ridge Racer 7 prepared me a bit better for it. When drifting you have to be quick to straighten your car, lest you take a massive loss of speed. It feels slippery, car-on-car collision doesn't feel quite right and the lack of analog support is harsh.... but I can't deny the game's charm. This single track was a load of fun, and I had so much fun during my 2-2.5 hours with the game, as I very slowly got better at drifting and actually managed to score first places! Having a banging soundtrack helped so much to keep me invested in the game, no lie.

 It's very hard to score Ridge Racer because while it's oh so very barebones... it's also pure bliss. It's a fun game to play, it's a fun course to race in and working out how to drift was fun. I mean, I was, heck, still am terrible at the game, but I had so much fun losing over and over again. That said, since I already played RR 7, and I know RR 4 has a very simple(and even more barebones!) remake of this game.... I just can't recommend it in good faith. It is a fun time, I think it's worth a look, but I don't think it's a game that deserves to be paid for in this day and age. And I'm telling you already, there's no way this game is making it into my "Worst of 2020" because, at its core, it's REALLY good.
 2.0 out of 10

Review #811: Ultra Street Fighter IV

 Greatness born out of laziness.

 I loved Street Fighter X Tekken, despite its garbage DLC practices which played a huge part of why the game bombed so hard. But if Capcom knows one thing it's how to be lazy and sell you a recycled product, so they grabbed all the Street Fighter assets, Rolento, Poison, Hugo, Elena as well as its six stages, they also repurposed Cammy's model to make Decapre and then resold Super Street Fighter IV AE as Ultra Street Fighter IV. Love it or hate it, Street Fighter IV rekindled the mainstream interest in Fighting games, making it a legendary game alongside Street Fighter II. This game came out at a time I was falling out of love with the Fighting genre, no longer watching every Evo and every other Tournament that came out, so I ended up skipping Ultra.

 Truth be told, there are more novelties to the game other than the new characters and stages. Now you can pick a third option when picking your Ultra: W Ultra Combo Double, which nets your character access to both Ultras, albeit a bit weakened to make up for the added tools. There's a new focus attack, Red Focus, which can tank any amount of hits instead of only one. Lastly, there's delayed wake up, to play tricks with your opponent. Nothing to mindboggling, but they are good additions. There are no new offline modes, which kinda suck considering Street Fighter IV was already pretty lacking there, but now you can play Versus matches with Edition Select, letting you pick any SF 4 version of whichever character you like. If you download the free dlc, you also get wacky Omega versions to pick from.

 Included with this game was every piece of DLC released up to that day, this means veteran characters get 3 DLC costumes, Super and AE characters get 2 DLC costumes and the newbies get none. You still need a Street Fighter IV savefile if you want access to colors 11 and 12 for the pre-AE characters, something I found out since my PS3's HDD got murdered a few years ago and didn't have a SFIV save file. Oh, and the last nine new characters(AE plus Ultra's new comers) still don't have Trials, which is ridiculous since they shouldn't be hard to implement, nor do they get Rival cutscenes, making them stand out from the rest of the roster. Remember how every iteration of Street Fighter IV up to now came with very beefy instruction manuals? Nope, not this time, Capcom had to follow their time-honed tradition of cutting corners.

 As far as the new characters go.... I really didn't care about the SF X T newcomers. I guess Hugo is so huge he is fun to fight, but that's it. Surprisingly, I really, really liked Decapre, the lazy model repurpose. She's like a much cooler version of Cammy and isn't wearing a glorified bathing suit.

 While I've got nothing but criticisms about Ultra Street Fighter IV as a product, there's no denying that underneath it all you've got Super Street Fighter IV, a classic through and through. The game is an absolute blast to play, it's always been. That said, I understand why I skipped this game back in the day, I didn't really care about the new characters and the new gameplay mechanics were but a few small nuances to an already spectacular set of mechanics so I never saw any need to get the new update. That said, anyone who is this late in getting into Street Fighter IV should undoubtedly pick up this final version, and someone that never made the jump from Super to AE might find 9 new characters a much more enticing offer.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #810: Blazing Chrome

 Part Contra, part Metal Slug, all metal.

 Believe it or not, I actually kinda like Contra, even though the only games I owned were Contra Force(I know), Alien Wars on the Gameboy and Shattered Soldier. That said, I'm always up for some Metal Slug. Blazing Chrome borrows a little from Metal Slug and a lot from Contra to produce an original 2-D shooter for a modern audience ironically borrowing very '80s aesthetics.

 At the beginning of the game you can only pick between Doyle, a robot punk, and Mavra, a human soldier, who must then go through 6 stages to fight the invading aliens. The first four stages can be played in any order, while the last two must be played one after the other. The game took me little less than an hour to complete on the Easy setting, which is a bit short but is just fine for a game like this, lasts just enough not to get boring. Beating the game unlocks a Boss Rush(Who plays those anymore?), Mirror mode(Move left to right instead of right to left) and Raijin and Suhaila as playable characters, which is a fair amount of extras. If you are braver and better than me, you can finish the game on Normal an unlock Hardcore difficulty.  It's a nice assortment of extras, and the fact that there's an easy mode so that terribads like me can brute force their way through the game is pretty nice. The game can also be played with another player in tow.

 Doyle and Mavra play exactly like you'd expect, being able to jump and shoot their infinite ammo assault rifles, as well as lay down into a prone position and roll from it(By pressing Jump while crouching). Tapping the shoot button next to an enemy will produce a melee attack, just like in Metal Slug. Lastly, you can hold down the R button to root yourself where you stand so that you can aim anywhere without moving. One touch is one death in this game, so learning how to deal with the enemies coming your way is paramount to your victory. To help you achieve that you can arm both heroes with more powerful weaponry: The Laser whip that deals a constant amount of damage as it hits enemies, a Grenade gun that's very slow but deals a ton of damage and the Laser gun that can be charged for more powerful shots. Once you get a weapon its yours to keep and switch between the others, but if you die while you have one of these optional weapons equipped...it's gone until you find it again. You'll also lose your weapons when you use a Continue. There's another type of power up: The bot. They are little assist drones that either speed you up, grant you two extra hits or grant you more speed.

 That's all fine and dandy... until you unlock Raijin and Suhaila, because these two offer a completely different playstyle. Instead of a basic, unlimited assault rifle they get short range sword/arm slices, and they can't equip other weapons.... but they can charge up their basic attack into a powerful, piercing wave that goes through every enemy in its path. They also get an aerial dash. They have their own benefits and drawbacks when compared to the original two characters, but having characters that play so unlike the others is a pretty great bonus.

 The stages themselves offer a nice amount of variety. Besides the usual run and gun you also get Contra inspired bike segments, as well as the occasional armored mechs you can pilot, which are a bit more Megaman X than Metal Slug to be honest. A few times I wished the game tried being a bit more original with the things it did, but at least what it did it did well, and considering the official Contra game we received was so lackluster.... I'll gladly take a great homage.

 Blazing Chrome is a great option for anyone that enjoys these 2-D run and gun games. It lasts as long as it should and the extras are a nice cherry on top. The Switch version of the game is lacking a few effects, like the bullet casings dropping from your gun, but it plays quite well. I read that the fifth stage had some slowdown but either I didn't notice it or it got fixed for the limited physical release. Regardless, I'm sure a little slowdown isn't enough to dampen this fantastic game.
 8.0 out of 10