Conan [Playstation 2]

Note: This review is part of a series I am going to call “Resurrected Reviews”, essentially stuff that I wrote for previous (now deceased) blogs and review topics on various gaming forums over the years. I have dragged them kicking-and-a-screaming into the harsh light of the present day and revamped them where necessary. Some may say “Rehash” but I say “Recycling”.

Release: 2004 | Developer: Cauldron | Publisher: TDK Mediactive | Also On: PC, Xbox, Gamecube

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger”

When talking about the videogame adventures of Robert E Howard’s legendary barbarian warrior, most will be more familiar with the PS3 game by THQ, a very average 3D adventure game that I personally found to be akin to a poor man’s God of War. The game that I will be talking about now (also titled simply ‘Conan’) came before on the PS2 and Gamecube and was published by TDK, developed by Cauldron. It’s completely unrelated to the THQ game but would it be better for it? Well…

Picture this: after a mere ten minutes of gameplay, I was staring dully at the TV screen with mental despair taking hold. I was thinking, why oh why are there no good Conan games? The PS3 game was an un-enjoyable slog to the finish after just a few hours of playtime and there are no others that I know of aside from the PC Age of Conan MMO which I can’t be arsed with as I simply don’t ‘do’ PC games. The only other Conan game I have glimpsed came in the form of a few screenshots for an unreleased Atari Jaguar side-scrolling beat ‘em up (the very definition of obscure!) so I was desperate for this PS2 effort to satisfy the Conan fan in me. But no, it just had to be another bitter pill of disappointment.

Why are there no decent Conan games? Why? The films were great (well, the first one was. Conan the Destroyer isn’t quite the same and the remake is just pointless) but the books were even better. I’ve read every one of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories and they were brilliant. Between these and the movie adaptations, there is a world of resource and inspiration for some good Conan games so why…are…there…no…good…Conan…games? WHY? WHY? WHERE ARE THE GOOD CONAN GAMES?!?

Whew. That’s better. Talk about your pent up frustration. In the spirit of Conan himself, I persevered and so with pad in hand I asked Crom for the strength to beat this game and if he wouldn’t listen? To hell with him.

To give Conan some credit, the game is at least faithful to the source material when it comes to locations, weapons and even the characterisation of Conan himself. This isn’t Conan as played by Arnie but the real Conan from E. Howard’s books and – as a fan of those tomes – I really appreciated what Cauldron did to keep things legit and authentically presented. The ‘epic’ music is generic but a good fit for the game (nothing else to say about it to be frank).

Gameplay revolves dispatching enemies with various button combinations. You have light attacks, heavy attacks, grabs and a block button. These are utilised to pull off preset combos and by killing enemies the player earns points to spend on unlocking new, flashier moves – standard stuff. Movement however is really clunky and despite using a few different pads, Conan sometimes simply refused to move in the desired direction when changing course. It didn’t cause too many unnecessary deaths during my play-through but it’s pretty piss-poor when a game makes you question the condition of your controllers, especially when it turns out that they are all working correctly.

This screen is actually from the Xbox version but I’m not sure I care enough.

If you do run out of health though then Conan is transported to the realm of Crom where you must defeat enemies in an enclosed arena in order to be fully restored to the spot where Conan snuffed it. Sounds pretty sweet right? Especially when you consider that the feature has unlimited uses. It’s actually the opposite though because these arena battles are much easier than battles in the mortal realm making Conan’s resurrections assured and the threat of enemies neutered. If you can’t ever technically be killed then where is the challenge? Conan’s apparent immortality also makes a mockery of boss battles because you can be infinitely restored to the spot with the enemy’s life bar still depleted.

The only way that you don’t get a chance to fight for Conan’s restoration is by falling foul of environmental hazards such as holes or traps (apparently Conan hasn’t died as a warrior thus denying him the right to be resurrected) but this still doesn’t excuse the ability to ignore strategy completely and abuse this mechanic. Ultimately, I wondered if there was any point at all in trying to utilise the game’s full range of moves because you may as well repeat the same handful of basic sword combos while spamming this revival ability. It’s certainly possible to beat the game this way with little trouble.

You can switch between swords, axes and maces throughout the game but again, unless you need the mace for beating down armoured foes more effectively, there’s no incentive to bother. There’s also a running side quest to locate and assemble all four pieces of the Atlantean Sword but any exploration is voided by the fact that a) environments are incredibly linear and bland and b) only one of the pieces is easy to miss with the others all in plain sight or after beating a boss. The Atlantean Sword deals with enemies in one hit and shamefully, I even killed the final boss with one wild swipe! Who tested this shit?

Braving the harsh elements and wild animals. At least the feel of the character and setting(s) is there.

The main problem with this game is the clunkiness and just general, basic dullness of everything. It really is an exercise in getting from A to B by killing everything in between, pulling a few levers and avoiding pitfalls. Lots of games have adopted this approach in the past and have turned out really well but Conan is just so uninteresting to sit through with repetitive scraps that don’t ever offer something new or stylish to at least paper over the shortcomings. It does say something that my highlight of the game was the quick cinematic of Conan punching a camel in a marketplace, a reference to a humorous scene in the original Arnie film. It made me smile at least when nothing else did.

The sole reason I persevered to the end was because the authenticity to the original books was spot on and I still wanted to see what happened in the end. I can imagine a non-Conan fan playing this game and binning it after a few levels because as much as I appreciated the videogame renditions of stuff from the books, it was always a case of sitting down and saying “right, got to get this bloody Conan game finished so I can play something else” rather than enjoying the game. I’m bored just writing about it.

Now that I’m nearing the conclusion of this review, I’m looking back over my words and thinking that I haven’t really gone into much detail but the truth is, I just don’t have anything else to say. So…is this an angry rant ending on a mellow note? Not until I’ve gone over the game’s miserable save system! I knew there was something else I hated about Conan – must have blocked it out of my mind for a moment there. Well, there’s no use in burying my head in the sand so I’ll talk about it.

Conan needs to possess a crystal to save the game. You can save anywhere (good) BUT you can only carry four of the damn things at any one time (bad) and let me tell you: there’s nothing worse than trying to make your last crystal go as far as possible only to fall down a hidden pit or be killed by a barely-visible trap because it means slogging back through the whole unsaved section all over again, slaying the same boring enemies and looking at the same uninspiring scenery (extremely, diarrhoea-grade bad). Who thinks that weird save systems like this are a good idea? Fuck these people. A game this underwhelming didn’t need to be any worse but congratulations developers, you managed it.

Overall Thoughts

It’s a shame that the gameplay is so uninspiring and bland because the source material was treated really well with this one. Conan is at least authentic in spirit but that means little when you barely want to play the actual game. Another missed oppurtunity.

Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! [Playstation 3]

Note: This review is part of a series I am going to call “Resurrected Reviews”, essentially stuff that I wrote for previous (now deceased) blogs and review topics on various gaming forums over the years. I have dragged them kicking-and-a-screaming into the harsh light of the present day and revamped them where necessary. Some may say “Rehash” but I say “Recycling”.

Onechanbara has always been a bit pervy but it does feel like the development team hit new heights with a new gen of hardware at their disposal.

When I completed Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! (more on that nutty subtitle later) for the PS3, I contemplated reviewing this import curio but eventually decided not to bother. Why? Because it’s flippin’ tough to form a stack of paragraphs for a game that has the player hacking up zombies as girls in skimpy bikinis – that’s why. There’s scant room to expand on this paper-thin concept. Z Kagura is one of those games that you simply cannot sit on the fence with; you either feverishly imported a copy as soon as it was released OR are currently about to click away from this blog to go and read something more highbrow on a different site…a detailed analysis on particle theory perhaps.

What I will say however is that Z Kagura is by far the most enjoyable and accessible Onechanbara game I have yet played and I have tried them all aside from the Japanese-only PSP instalment and the gloriously-titled Bikini Samurai Squad on the Xbox 360 (a system I don’t own). The older games felt punishing and extremely bare-bones with excruciatingly sluggish levelling up systems and the less said about the hellish Wii waggle-a-thon controls in Bikini Zombie Slayers, the better. Z Kagura immediately struck me as easier to stomach for long periods of time and the game generally felt better presented with solid controls, a compliant manually adjustable camera and more fluid hack ‘n slash action than ever before.

(But wait; this is turning into a review after all isn’t it? Fuck.)

Otherwise it was business as usual and thanks to the greatly improved aesthetics and sense of progression (upgrades are much easier to afford and equip than in past games), it was certainly no hardship to be tasked with cutting down crazy numbers of zombies and other freakish abominations while playing as an unsuitably garbed heroine. You can switch freely between the buxom bikini-clad Kagura and her more conservatively dressed sister Saaya but thanks to the wonders of the customisation mode (or ‘co-ordinate’ mode as the game dubs it), you can stick Saaya in the same bikini as her sister for double the jiggly boobs and gratuitously exposed bottoms. Look; until there actually is a zombie apocalypse, nobody can say for a fact that these kinds of outfits aren’t suitable for a desperate battle against the undead can they?

Kagura had guys lining up to buy her a drink. Most non-interested girls politely decline but some reply with the business end of a massive blade. Life lesson: stay single; you’ll live longer.

Kagura can go to war against the zombies with either a pair of katanas or her long-reaching blades that she swings about on the end of a chain just like Kratos from the God of War series. Her sister meanwhile can flick between fighting with her fists and feet to using a chainsaw. It was nice to have a variety of weapons rather than another all-swords affair but I didn’t really gel with Saaya’s hands-on melee style or her cumbersome chainsaw attacks so tended to stick with Kagura. Her chained blades are useful when you need to fight from a distance and the katanas are just that much more speedy as well as visually pleasing.

The linear nature of the series hasn’t changed though. You still have to eliminate all enemies within set areas before moving onto the next zone and occasionally facing off against an ugly boss. Thankfully though, the combat itself was much more enjoyable this time largely due to the decent camera (manipulated freely with the right analogue stick) and easy to execute combos that devastate zombie hordes, sending blood spraying everywhere in a comically over-the-top fashion. The rampage state (induced by doing enough killing to fill a blood meter) is still here and you still have to routinely clean your weapons to keep them effective but somehow it all feels a vast step up from those earlier PS2 games which were fun playthings but ultimately too frustrating beyond the first few stages to properly enjoy. There are some brief cut scenes here and there but this is a Japanese import so don’t expect to understand any of it and certainly don’t expect an English-language release to become available because – y’know – this shit is just too weird for us over here apparently. That said, there isn’t much that a language barrier can do to complicate a hack ‘n slash game when all you need to understand are the concepts of swords, zombies and breasts.

There’s blood. Lots of it.

Speaking of weird, there’s that subtitle to address: Onechanbara Z Kagura with NoNoNo! That’s not the sound of the game’s heroines protesting as the developers dump them into a zombie apocalypse with bikinis for protection; it’s the name of Z Kagura’s special guest character, unlocked by completing at least five of the game’s ‘Quests’ (a screen of various targets to meet i.e. collect enough yellow orbs, use enough items in battle, clear missions without switching characters etc.). This is an Onechanbara game though so it’s no great shock when NoNoNo! turns out to be a blue-haired maid with ginormous boobs and a ludicrously round rear end that could only exist in such a smutty videogame as this where developers have sat at their workstations playing God when it comes to plausible anatomy.

NoNoNo! fights while cheerfully dancing about and shooting at zombies with some sort of sci-fi laser pistol and…yeah. Because Japan. I had a brief look online and couldn’t find out who this character was supposed to be. I can only assume that she’s some sort of Japanese idol or ‘vocaloid’ character similar to Hatsune Miku but as much as I love all things Japan, I’m clearly not Otaku enough to know the truth about NoNoNo! (searching on Google brought up a Swedish band of the same name). Anyway, I didn’t particularly enjoy playing as NoNoNo! over Kagura or Saaya so I did feel a little deflated after all that work for the unlock but there was at least her tasteful and conservative rampage mode costume, certain to please progressive gamers:

Obey the ‘CAUTION’ tape.

So it’s ridiculous, gory and sexy but there were some things that I have to grumble about. First and foremost are the numerous glitches. I experienced a few nasty ones:

• Getting stuck in the boundary fencing during a boss battle and being unable to avoid being beaten to death or fight back.
• Hitting a zombie through a boundary fence and being unable to clear all enemies from the area in question.
• Falling through some scenery and getting stuck inside before falling again into a horrible, blurry black abyss of glitchy hell.

All of these required software resets and generally gave me little faith in the game’s stability, leaving me waiting for the next game-ruining gremlin to pop-up. This wouldn’t really be something you could moan about too much on the older PAL PS2 games since they were cheap, budget affairs that didn’t warrant any sort of expectations. Importing is expensive though and Z Kagura was more or less the same price as a brand-new, full price PS3 game for a sealed copy so these bugs irked me more than usual. That said, expecting a lot of polish from an Onechanbara game is like expecting a Sharknado sequel to stand alongside Citizen Cane.

Another issue is that you won’t be able to access the game’s DLC unless you mess about with multiple PSN accounts. It’s not a strike against the game itself of course but it is a shame because Z Kagura’s add-ons include customisation parts, new outfits and even Aya + Saki from the previous Onechanbara games as playable characters. On a side note, a quick images search online shows that some of the DLC outfits are so skimpy that the player might as well sell their imagination on ebay because they likely won’t need it anymore. Who said DLC was cynical?

These few niggles aside however, I still stand by my decision to rate Z Kagura as the best Onechanbara game so far. I haven’t really criticised the linearity or simple nature of the game because to expect anything else by now would be foolish and it’s almost a part of the series’ charm in a crappy way. If a studio such as Platinum were given the keys then we might see something truly extraordinary but until then, this is bizarre Japanese budget gaming at its most enjoyable. My only advice would be to skip ahead to the sequel, Z2 Chaos, which received a worldwide release on PS4 and should be an even better game at a more affordable, non-import price. Unless you really must play as NoNoNo! of course…

Overall Thoughts

So rubbish, it’s amazing. That’s always been the Onechanbara way and it’s no different with Z Kagura. You already know if you will enjoy this so you really don’t need my seal of approval.

 

 

Soulcalibur VI is a miracle

At the time of writing this post, it is Monday the 22nd of October. Soulcalibur VI was released on Friday the 19th and quite honestly, I’m still getting over how impressed I am with the game. Obviously, I knew that the game was going in the right direction from all of the previews and teasers that showed off a more nostalgic character roster harking back to SC, SCII and SCIII but I deliberately held off on knowing too much which may be why I was so pleasantly surprised when I had the actual game in my hands at long last.

It’s great to see Tira back with her SCIII “sexy green rags” and even that decidedly non-15th century hair colour.

In short, this game feels a lot closer to SCII and SCIII as far as I’m concerned. More competitive players might feel otherwise but as somebody who has heavily enjoyed the series from the very beginning, I feel qualified to say that. I absolutely abhorred the reinvention that was SCV so it is absolutely joyful to discover that – Critical Edge ‘super’ moves aside – literally everything about that game has been chucked into the dumpster, hopefully in the most unceromonious way possible.

Gone are the new characters and descendants/disciples that nobody asked for in the first place. Gone are all the new gameplay mechanics that they introduced for SCV. Those super moves are still cinematic and damaging but this time, they don’t feel quite so decisive and the meter that governs their use appears to fill at a more sedate pace. There is also some single-player content this time in the form of a main story mode and a secondary story mode which involves some levelling-up, side-missions and attractive production value. I haven’t gotten anywhere near finishing the latter yet but it feels like it could take some time so that’s nice.

I’m also extremely satisfied to see the classic Guard Impact feature return with no restriction. SCV made GI a meter-dependant technique which (in my opinion at least) killed the gameplay. Guard Impact was always about mastering the timing and committing to that risk vs reward element just like with the parrying in Street Fighter III. It separated button-mashers from practiced players and was a staple of the series so it is fantastic to have it back in a free-to-use capacity.

The best way to die in battle (if you have weird, perverse ideas like me anyway…) returns thanks to the re-inclusion of Sophitia.

Overall it simply feels like the development team have poured a lot of love into Soulcalibur VI. I have read that this game NEEDS to do well at retail or Namco-Bandai may very well can the series once and for all. SCV wasn’t ‘supposed’ to happen after all and only saw the light of day due to internal resistance to the idea of the series being put away in storage. It then sold poorly so perhaps Project Soul were permitted to make this game more to their tastes as opposed to reinventing Soulcalibur again in accordance to the wishes of marketing men.

The only negatives I have to report so far are pretty minor niggles. ‘Soul Points’ (used to ‘pay’ for unlocking certain customisation parts) are pretty tough to earn offline and the 5000 Gold > 100SP exchange rate within the Libra of Soul mode is pretty rough. I have no doubt that Soul Points are easier to earn by playing online (it’s usually the case with any of these reward systems in modern fighting games) but as I don’t actually have a Playstation Plus sub, I can’t comment on that side of things right now. The other mini-moan is directed at the character creator mode itself and the fact that the bulk of the parts are exactly the same as those we have been using to build characters with for several generations of SC games now. Some fresh bits and pieces would have been nice.

Those small issues aside, I’m loving this game. It’s been great to leap back in with my ‘main’ – Sophitia – and instantly get back into the groove with all of her well-practiced moves. I intend to learn Zasalamel and Tira next since those are two more of my favourites, Zasalamel in particular being a character that I wished for pre-reveal but didn’t expect to actually see in SCVI given that this game takes place before SCIII (Zasalamel’s debut). I’m guilty of being a cynical old git when it comes to modern gaming so the fact that SCVI has exceeded my expectations and shocked me with how much it appeals to the SC series veteran in me feels like a small miracle, especially following SCV which I didn’t think I would ever get over.

Stay tuned and I will get some pictures up soon of the collector’s edition (European version).

Sprung: The Dating Game [DS]

Note: This review is part of a series I am going to call “Resurrected Reviews”, essentially stuff that I wrote for previous (now deceased) blogs and review topics on various gaming forums over the years. I have dragged them kicking-and-a-screaming into the harsh light of the present day and revamped them where necessary. Some may say “Rehash” but I say “Recycling”.

If the back of the game’s box doesn’t make you question your life decisions i.e. buying this game then not much else will, I’m afraid to say.

If the recent coverage of relatively mainstream games on this blog has failed to ignite your interest then I sincerely hope that this review of Sprung: The Dating Game for the DS will go some way to making amends. To the gentleman sitting in the back corner of the room there: recoiling in horror was indeed the correct response. We’re heading a bit further off the beaten track this time and we may find ourselves in the tangled undergrowth where anything could be lying in wait; woeful software for handheld gaming devices for instance.

A few important side notes before we continue:

1. People handed over £25-£30 of their hard earned cash for this at the DS launch!

2. Some people out there (they won’t show their faces for the shame) would have bought this back in April 2005 instead of the likes of Mario 64 DS or Warioware Touched. Christ. I mean…I’m all about personal tastes and all that but still…Christ.

I’m not going to pull any punches here; this game is crap. However, I’m a reasonable chappie capable of spotting redeeming qualities in most games and I firmly believe that too many gamers these days rush to use the “worst game ever” judgement. In my experience, most disagreeable games are merely average or flawed with merit-worthy aspects. I’ve played hundreds of different games across many consoles and I can honestly say that I could count the truly awful ones on less than ten fingers. They simply don’t exist in the quantities that are made out. Unfortunately for Sprung, it easily manages to make it onto my Worst Games I’ve Ever Played roll-call.

You know what to do here. Get her [edited for obscenities]

Without a doubt, this should be the undisputed worst game in the DS’ European launch line-up but it is spared that accolade due to the existence of Ping Pals, a title that was nothing more than a tarted up version of FREE software built into the DS from day one yet PP was expected to sell to customers for real money (lolz etc.).

Now I don’t have anything against dating games per se as there have been some really quirky and interesting examples produced in Japan (such as Konami’s Toki Meki Memorial series) that I’d love to play but the language barrier is a big problem. More recent examples have been a bit too much for our Western tastes which simply (and rightly so) do not gel with the concept of chatting up digital schoolgirls with obscenely voluminous water balloon knockers but there are alternatives that won’t have you checking the skies for black helicopters. If Sprung was intended to be the Western response to the Japanese games however then the developers failed and I’m going to explain why.

To start with, the story is a load of stereotypical rubbish about a group of college friends going off to a ski resort to have a good time. You can choose to play as either a boy or a girl and the entire game from there on in is literally just a series of conversations with other people on the mountain. Most of these exchanges involve you trying to chat somebody up in a park, club or bar but others are supposed to be humorous and some are just downright bizarre. ‘Gameplay’ boils down to choosing from a preset selection of lines on the touch screen and trying to say the right things to advance the conversation in the correct direction. Remember when you bought your shiny new DS for those revolutionary new ways of interacting with your games and all the innovative possibilities that the touch-screen might offer? Yeah – I do too.

Decisions, decisions…

There are so many problems with this basic game premise that it’s difficult to know where to start. First up, it’s a bit boring isn’t it? Sitting there and just tapping away at lines of wordzzzzz..zzzz…The boredom is also complimented by infuriating frustration as it quickly becomes apparent that the ‘right’ things to say to NPC characters are the things that you’d never expect and when most of the conversations are so bloody weird in the first place, selecting the correct options is a lottery. Additionally you can only get so far with making the wrong decisions before you fail the chapter and have to start all over again. ‘Miserable’ and ‘brain-rotting’ are apt descriptions for the typical mental state that Sprung will induce after just a short while with the game. You start to analyse this software a little too deeply i.e. is Sprung telling me that I should tell a woman whatever it is they want to hear in order to stop them slamming their legs shut? (protip: don’t use this game as any form of ‘training’)

There are also various items that you can use at key moments but you’d have more luck cracking a combination safe than deciphering when to use them and with which NPC. Just in case you needed an extra layer of cryptic obscurity of course. But the worst is still to come, oh yes it is.

The game throws you a lifeline by offering checkpoints which, on paper, is a great idea. Some of the chapters are very long so not having to re-do the entire thing over due to an inevitable error should be a relief but in practice these checkpoints have a downright sinister side. You see, saying the wrong thing sometimes means that certain text selections don’t pop up further on in the chapter. This is already bad enough because you will unwittingly play on, unaware that an earlier mistake has made it impossible to complete a chapter and so you proceed until its Game Over. Huzzah for checkpoints then eh? You wish…

Let’s be honest: this guy looks like a jerk without Becky having to say it.

In a heinous turn of events, making that critical mistake before a checkpoint means that you can return to that checkpoint as many times as you like but it will be impossible to correct said error and you will always be left with the same strand of dud responses post-checkpoint. You can’t backtrack because you are locked into restarting from the checkpoint and you can’t talk your way out of it because every available line will only lead to dating doom since the options you need won’t appear due to that mistake before the checkpoint. Did anybody test this bullshit? Clearly not.

Are there any positives? Well, the cartoon-like character art is pretty good but otherwise…no! The “gameplay” is about as inspiring as an empty void, the DS’ unique features are all wasted and the humour is as funny as a funeral on a rainy day. It all adds up to a nasty maelstrom of frustration and tedium that must be binned off with all haste to preserve one’s sanity. Sprung’s tag-line is “The game where everybody scores” but it seems to me that they forgot to add “an all-expenses paid trip to the sanatorium”. It must have not fitted on the box.

Why would anybody play this shit instead of doing the real thing? Who was it aimed at? At least Japanese dating sims have an anime charm and far eastern weirdness that makes them appealing for us Western gamers. Sprung on the other hand has literally nothing to offer apart from negative vibes and a guaranteed bad mood when you finally switch the console off (hopefully after no more than five minutes of suffering and even that would be showing the game some saintly generosity…). It may seem like I’ve barely described this game but that’s because there’s nothing to discuss. You click on lines of text and stare at character portraits hoping that something, anything else will happen but it never does.

If you see Sprung on the pre-owned shelves for a few quid and are curious then don’t be. They say that curiosity killed the cat and if you were to compare yourself to that proverbial cat then you’d be sprawled in an upsetting heap in some gutter after being hit by a bus at 50mph should you give in to curiosity. I paid five English pounds for this game to see what it was like and that was embarrassing enough but if I’d paid £25 on release? I would have killed myself as a bare minimum response to such epic masochism and stupidity.

Overall Thoughts

Playing Sprung is like taking a hot date to bed then discovering that you’ve contracted a multitude of STD’s. Heed this public service announcement and avoid, avoid, avoid.

Need For Speed Underground 2 [Playstation 2]

I have a strange relationship with EA’s Need for Speed Underground games. Despite always being a big car person (or ‘petrolhead’), I looked down on these games when they were current because they tapped into a street racing subculture which appeared far more glamorous in Japan or the US while here in the UK, it was associated with ‘ricers’ or ‘chavs’ building ugly, thunderous monstrosities out of Citroen Saxos or Peugeot 206’s. I was busier playing my intellectual JRPG’s and skillful fighting games while the masses were buying NFSU in droves.

There was also a stigmata associated with EA during the PS2 era if you ran in certain gaming circles. It was the impression that they only slapped their name on yearly cash-cow updates, average licensed fare and software that they could sell via cynical marketing which tapped into what teenage boys of the mid 00’s wanted. So football, loud cars and tits then.

It probably didn’t help that I eventually played the original Underground and wasn’t that impressed. However, I have been heavily re-involved with cars and the ‘scene’ over the last 6-7 years and in an ironic twist of fate, I now actually MISS the days of The Fast & The Furious movies, street racing culture and magazines like Max Power with topless models draped over ridiculous cars. Most of this has evaporated and with the constant droning message about road users needing to be responsible as well as the ‘lads mags’ being killed off (because sexism…whatever), the world feels like a more sterilised and straight place.

So I was ready to give NFSU2 a chance after snagging a cheap copy in a bundle of PS2 games. It is after all, one of the better-regarded games in the series with a bit of a following.

Urban cityscape and a nitrous-fuelled motion blur: welcome back to the mid 00’s.

The first thing that hit me was how good the game still looked. ‘Jaggies’ and outdated textures are pretty minimal and the car models are fantastic. As a petrolhead, I can safely say that all of the cars in this game are modelled highly accurately with a nice level of detail down to the correct badges and original exterior equipment. This was a nice surprise because I admit I was expecting worse from an annual EA update, perhaps a mistaken presumption that the game would have been blasted out by the developers in time for its intended release with a lack of polish. But no, the visuals and those cars look a lot better than many other racers of the generation and hold up incredibly well today.

EA added in a free-roam structure to NFSU2 as well and this really elevated it above the first game. Simply speeding about the city to different race events is enjoyable and even though the ‘free’ aspect is obviously limited by being stuck inside a car, it’s much more preferable to selecting races from a menu. Most circuit and sprint events use sections of the city too so getting familiarised with the many corners and shortcuts while in free-roam mode definitely helps when it comes to the races.

Race events are varied with circuit and sprint events joined by drift challenges (score more points than opponents), drag races and the new ‘Street X’ event which consists of small, tight courses that take place in car parks or (for some reason) building sites. These are more about acceleration, handling and taking the best racing lines. Finally there are the Underground Racing League events. These are the biggies that take place on proper race tracks and progress the game’s career mode. You are able to use a dyno and test track(s) to custom tune your car for each event, settings that are auto-loaded upon entering each style of event which does at least offer a bit more depth.

You have to start somewhere with cars like Vauxhall’s Corsa.

Progressing the career mode also means meeting the requirements of various sponsors that sign up to your cause. These demands are pretty straightforward and involve winning a set amount of events as well as sponsor races which pay out a lot more cash. You also need to get your car featured on a set number of tuning magazine and DVD covers and this is achieved by raising the star rating of your ride’s visual appearance until the call comes in for you to hightail it to the photographer’s location.

The only crappy thing about this aspect in my personal opinion is that it forces you to go all in and fit every conceivable modification possible such as neon underlighting, carbon body panels and hydraulics. So if you’re like me and prefer minimalism or a stock appearance then it ain’t going to cut it with the sponsors. It also means paying for components then having to continually replace them with ‘better’ versions down the line as parts are gradually unlocked, an artificial method of extending the game’s life but completely expected. I kept a separate Nissan 240SX that received the visual mods purely for this side of things then spent the rest of my cash on performance upgrades for my other cars that I could then ‘tastefully’ modify on the outside.

Still, the magazine and DVD covers made me smile and took me back to that period in time that I talked about earlier. They might look ‘laddish’ and chauvinistic by 2018’s easily offended standards but I like ’em.

If you remember these types of magazines with a fondness then you will definitely appreciate NFSU2 and the culture it represents.

It’s a shame that the game’s AI didn’t make me smile as much. If you want to take the proper racing lines and overtake opponents cleanly as you would have to in real life then forget it. Towards the beginning of the game this is entirely possible but later on as things take a turn for the challenging, you’d best forget it. Rivals launch themselves up the inside of your car kamikaze-style in the corners and pile into the back of you for braking zones as if this is a Destruction Derby sequel, not Need For Speed. Worse still, they have no qualms about punting you off the track or even utilising the police-approved PIT maneuver to spin you out. Cheating bastards!

I tried to race fairly because I hate winning in racing games by abusing a lack of damage modelling to bash my way to the front but unfortunately, you have to lower your standards with this game and fight fire with fire sometimes, especially since the game’s AI has another crafty weapon up its sleeve: the dreaded rubber band effect. Opponents seem a lot less inconvenienced by collisions with civilian traffic (whereas a single smash can ruin YOUR entire race) and can somehow take tight corners at impossible speeds, sometimes while using nitrous. You can leave them several seconds behind by getting out in front and driving perfectly but the game allows them to catch right back up to you on the last lap as if they have been handed a secret performance boost. This sort of thing makes sense in a game like Mario Kart but in a proper racing game involving real cars that have real performance figures and capabilities…well, it just sucks.

It also blew my mind to witness heavy muscle cars like the Mustang and Pontiac GTO leaving me for dust on twisty, technical circuits that should never favour such vehicles. Losing drag races to Vauxhall Corsas and Ford Focuses somehow capable of reaching near-200mph speeds was another mind-boggling development.

The game can also strategically place a taxi or van around a blind bend and this is unbelievably frustrating after investing seven-or-so minutes into a race, successfully keeping those shady opponents at bay for three long laps only to lose it all and have to start again because there was a unavoidable crash around the final corner. I’ve even experienced a white van speeding over an intersection right into my path as if God himself decided that I wasn’t allowed to win the race. Whether this was EA’s subtle commentary on the infamous “White Van Man”, I can’t say but I swore quite a bit!

Overall Thoughts

There is a lot to like about Need For Speed Underground 2 and thankfully, the good bits just about outweigh the rotten AI-related elements. There was of course the added bonus of getting a far more polished game than I was expecting but it definitely helps if you consider the racing to be more of an arcade game than a serious sim. For me personally though, I really enjoyed being transported back to that era of street racing and the JDM craziness inspired by what was happening in Japan and the Fast & Furious movies. NFSU2 perfectly captures that subculture – just don’t expect gentlemanly conduct from the game’s AI.

Lumines [PSP] & Lumines Plus [PS2]

When Lumines first arrived for the PSP back in 2004 (2005 for Western territories), did the gaming landscape really need another puzzler based around clearing rows of blocks? Arguably not but somebody decided that we did and so a brand-new puzzle series kicked off in earnest.

Yes, the object is to clear the screen of blocks and yes, it’s game over if they reach the top of the play area but thankfully, Lumines is a bit more than “been there, done that, got the T-shirt”. Blocks always come in two different colours and are cleared in 2×2 squares (as opposed to complete rows as in Tetris) for starters. Not crazy enough? Formations of the same colour can be linked together to clear lots of blocks at the same time and there is also a special block that – when forming part of a 2×2 – clears every single block of the same colour that is linked to that 2×2. As you can imagine, there are some huge scores to be had by strategically filling half of the screen with carefully linked blocks and then deleting the whole lot in one go with the special block, leading to everything else crashing down and forming loads more links for even more clearance and mega points.

But even that sounds fairly pedestrian and I’d totally forgive you for asking why you should even care about any of this. Thankfully, Lumines has a secret weapon and it’s the power of music.

The Time Line is your best friend and – sometimes – also your greatest foe.

The game sports a soundtrack largely comprising of the House and Electronica styles of music and each stage (known as “skins” in Lumines) that you play on has its own unique track. Score enough points and the stage will transition into a new one with a new skin and a new track. This keeps things fresh and interesting but the music is much more than that in Lumines. The ‘Time Line’ bar constantly scrolling from left-to-right changes speed based on the tempo of the music and only blocks arranged ahead of the bar will be cleared once it reaches the other side of the screen. This can either lead to a race against time to get your combos set up before the Time Line gets there or, when the screen is perilously full on a more sedately-paced skin, you will be willing the bar to get a damn move on and clear some space before waiting blocks overload the play area.

The sound effects for blocks dropping into place and being cleared are also unique for each skin and team up with the music to form an ever-evolving audio experience for the ears. When you are really in the zone and nailing massive combo after massive combo while the music ramps up, then Lumines totally clicks and it comes into its own as a unique puzzle game.

Honestly, the only reason I can see somebody not enjoying Lumines to any degree would purely be down to the type of music involved not being to their tastes. I described it above as House and Electronica in style so if you aren’t a fan then you may struggle to ‘get’ it. Otherwise, it’s a very addictive puzzler that actually offers a decent challenge and I always have the itch for “one more go” to see if I can get further in the single-player challenge mode and see some new skins. Better still, the game was a launch title for the PSP and as such is common-as-muck and easy to pick up for a few pounds. Bargain!

Versus mode (against CPU or a friend) is interesting. Clearing blocks pushes the boundary towards the opponent and reduces their playing area, applying serious pressure.

Fast forward a few years and Lumines Plus was released for the Playstation 2. Billed as an expanded version of the original, the game is already on the back foot purely for not being on a handheld. Lumines was a perfect fit for the PSP and on-the-move gaming…not so much for a home system. It might sound lazy but let’s face it, waiting for the disc to load up on the PS2 and then being tied to your sofa with a wired pad in hand doesn’t feel as “right”. Still, it doesn’t affect the quality of the original game and having a bigger display and (depending on your set-up) more capable speakers is an advantage for the Plus edition.

The main selling point of the PS2 version was the inclusion of a handful of new skins so in theory, Lumines Plus should be a definitive edition of the original game. Unfortunately, I noticed a few small niggles when moving from the PSP version to Plus. Firstly, there seems to be a brief two-three second pause during the transition of skins which leaves you in silence and interrupts the flow. Not ideal for a music-based game! Also – for whatever reason – the cool robotic voice that announces the name of the track as the music switches over, is completely missing from this version. Otherwise the game is a straight port with extremely minimal differences which I found to be a bit of a letdown. Even the menus and front end are indentical.

Ultimately though it’s the lack of portability that scuppers the Plus edition. If you don’t have access to a PSP then Lumines Plus for the PS2 is perfectly serviceable and still a great puzzle game. Otherwise, I don’t consider the additional skins to be a worthwhile trade-off for not having Lumines in its more fitting, handheld environment. Owning both versions is completely unnecessary and I only do so because I am some sort of batshit weird hoarder/magpie.

Overall Thoughts…

If you enjoy puzzle games (especially of the falling tile/block persuasion) or games with a heavy infusion of music then Lumines is a no-brainer. For the pitiful amount of currency that a used copy trades hands for these days, the risk to your wallet barely registers. Only bother with the Plus edition for PS2 if you don’t have a PSP or if you absolutely HAVE to play it on the big screen but you know, that’s kind of what those PSP-TV cables were designed for?

My Bespoke Playstation Classic

By now, I’m sure you (and everybody else on the planet) has heard all about Sony’s upcoming Playstation Classic device, the “mini” set to capitalise on the popularity of similar products by Nintendo. I’m not going to go into massive detail on my thoughts because let’s face it: that’s already been done to death on the internet by countless people with greater influence and popularity than me – jus’ sayin’. All I will say is that I think the Playstation Classic will sell very well. The nostalgia boundaries have shifted over the last decade and whereas before it was Atari and Nintendo stuff that people wanted to go back to and revisit from their childhood, now it’s the time of 90’s systems such as the original Playstation.

Anyway, this is going to be a list of the fifteen titles that I would PERSONALLY put on the Playstation Classic (to complete the line-up of twenty) if it were to be tailor-made to me. This isn’t a list of the best games or the most marketable options but just a reflection of what I enjoyed the most on the original Playstation.

Go!

Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer

Honestly, this is a tough call because while most people say that Gateway to Glimmer (or Ripto’s Rage if you live in the US) is the best of the original trilogy, I have a massive love for the original game. In fact, the two are almost on par with one another but I have to give the edge to Spyro 2 simply for its greater depth and versatility. I never tire of revisiting this game either with my original PS1 copy or Vita download.

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back

The best of the original trilogy for numerous reasons. Challenging while not being as brutal as the original and slightly more ‘pure’ than Warped, Crash 2 is just right and like the Spyro games, the original style of graphics and the polish originally worked into them by Naughty Dog hasn’t aged badly at all.

Resident Evil 3 Nemesis

This one may be a bit controversial because the original game has the nostalgia factor and the sequel is widely touted as the best game of the series, so much so that a much-demanded full-on remake is at last happening. Resi 3 was not as well loved due to the abundance of ammo removing that resource management factor and also the apparent lack of scares compared to its forerunners. I say “apparent” because as far as I’m concerned, there WERE plenty of crap-your-pants moments. I also much preferred exploring the decimated city itself. Hopefully Nemesis gets a remake too in the future but until then, I’d love to see it on a Playstation Classic.

Final Fantasy VIII

FFVII lovers gon’ hate but they can suck it because FFVIII is better in my opinion. In fact, Final Fantasy VIII is my favourite game of all-time so it has to have a place on this list. Love the gameplay, love the characters, love the music – I love everything about it. Well, not the Malboro monsters and their evil “Bad Breath” attack but nobody likes those in any edition of FF.

Medievil

I’ve spoken about Medievil here on the blog before, back when a remake was announced. Unlike the games above, this is a case of the original being nominated over sequels because while Medievil 2 carries some heavy nostalgia for me, a recent revisit proved to be frustrating and not as enjoyable as I recalled. The original however is absolute classic and while the gameplay itself is merely average, it’s the twisted gothic visuals, haunting music and the lore of Gallowmere itself that make the game so great. As with Spyro and Crash, I could happily play Medievil until doomsday and that’s why it needs to be on this list.

Driver

The Driver series has had some serious ups-and-downs over the years. The first two were highly enjoyable games while Driv3r (worst title for a game ever) tried to capitalise on the GTA craze and include on-foot shooting sections in addition to the titular driving. Unfortunately, it was an awful, glitchy mess that could have fatally torpedoed the franchise for good. Parallel Lines persisted with the on-foot bullshit (but was at least a far more polished game that WORKED) before the most recent installment – San Francisco – made Driver great again. Anyway, the original is a true classic that many like myself will remember fondly for the crazy ‘Take a Ride’ mode with its murderous cop cars and fantastic smashes. The less said about the opening parking lot level though, the better. Could the kids of today even be bothered to get through that?

Tombi

I absolutely adore this 2D platformer. Full of humour and luscious design, it was the kind of game that made the mainstream death of 2D platforming titles seem all the more a tragedy. After all, the PS1 and Sega Saturn often showed us what was possible with more powerful hardware than the 16bits but when these games came along, nobody bought them. Tombi was – thankfully given a digital PSN re-release because otherwise, the only way to play the game would be to shell out on expensive, original copies. To have a Playstation Classic without this would be against the law in my opinion.

Tekken 2

Tekken 3 is set to be on the actual Playstation Classic but while I do very much enjoy the third game in the series, it’s Tekken 2 that does it for me. Today it is a blocky, simplistic fighter compared to the current Tekkens but don’t be fooled because the gameplay here is utter gold. The Playstation version of the game ran at a super-smooth 60fps and the character roster was perfectly formed with many iconic faces. More importantly, the backdrops were beautiful in their simplicity and the music is easily the best of the series with tracks that suit each character’s personality to a T.

Ghost in the Shell

This is another hidden gem of sorts. Rather than playing as the iconic Major Motoko herself, the player pilots one of the Tachikoma spider tank things. You can walk up vertical surfaces, shooting down helicopters and taking out epic bosses. It’s just a really fun game that anybody can enjoy regardless of how much they know about Ghost in the Shell. The game is challenging enough but also immensely satisfying largely in part to the versatility of your vehicle. I’m not sure about the US version of the game but the PAL edition is relatively uncommon and commands a small premium. I own a Japanese copy that I managed to complete (thanks to English-language menus) but I’d certainly be up for playing through it again with the pleasure of having the English VA for the story cutscenes.

Ray Tracers

Ray Tracers is the result of the following formula: Chase HQ + anime characters + 90’s arcade racing games and it’s as good as it sounds. The game is quite short but challenging during the later stages to make up for it. I really enjoyed the 90’s arcade feel to the game with the music and handling of the cars and Ray Tracers just has that general pick-up-and-play goodness going on so it would be a perfect companion to the longer time sinks on a Playstation Classic device.

Einhander

Rarely has a developer deviated from their safe zone which such amazing results. Einhander was the result of Squaresoft taking a break from JRPG’s and randomly releasing their first and last shoot ’em up. And what a shmup it is. I’d heard all of the hype over Einhander for years and was ready for an OVERhyped experience when I got hold of a Japanese import but the game is simply amazing. The futuristic setting is very nicely rendered, the bosses are epic and being able to switch between two different stored power-ups is immensely satisfying.

Toca Touring Cars 2

I may be a bit biased here since Toca 2 perfectly captured my favourite era of the British Touring Car Championship, now looked back on as the “Super Touring” era. The game itself is a fantastic racer though with an incredible amount of polish that really proved why Codemasters had the reputation they did. I would actually take this over Gran Turismo so it’s a shame that the real Playstation Classic’s pads don’t come with analogue sticks…

Kula World

Kula World (also known as “Roll Away” in other territories) was a prime example of creative thinking in an era that many bemoan due to a flood of identikit games and the birth of overly-cinematic gaming. The game is minimalistic but doesn’t need fancy backgrounds or super-duper graphics. What you get is a fiendish puzzler that starts off easy before gradually morphing into a brain-taxing experience that will have you tearing your hair out. There are a 100 levels in Kula World and I only managed to get to 60-something before throwing in the towel. That said, I can’t resist another go.

Space Invaders

Another game with multiple names. In Japan, this was called Space Invaders X. Outside of Japan, it came with the rather more generic title of “Space Invaders“. This was a remake of sorts, not produced by Taito this time due to some sort of licensing deal which saw multiple 70’s/80’s arcade classics revamped for the Playstation era by Activision. Anyway, I really enjoy this game in either single player or co-op. There are some awesome power-ups (acquired by destroying four of the same colour invader in a chain) and massive bosses to test your reflexes. The game doesn’t get a lot of love (it doesn’t seem to be liked that much by the Space Invaders faithful) but I’ve always got a real kick out of playing it.

Croc: Legend of the Gobbos

Crash and Spyro may get the lion’s share of the plaudits when it comes to PS1 platforming but for me, Croc: Legend of the Gobbos was right up there with the big hitters from Naughty Dog and Insomniac. Like those other, more popular platformers, Croc‘s 3D visuals adopted a more cartoonish approach and have aged similarly well with outdated textures and the like not being overly distracting in 2018. The game was actually quite challenging as well, especially if you were going for 100% completion and finding all of secrets. I rate Croc highly and would love to see it get a second chance.

So those are my picks. Of the five games that Sony have already confirmed for the Classic, I have to say that I am pretty interested in Wild Arms since it was an RPG I didn’t play and an original copy sells for anywhere between £20-£40 here in the UK at the time of writing this. Ridge Racer Type 4 is a solid racer with a meaty career mode and Final Fantasy VII is also an amazing game, albeit one that has been re-released a bit too much in recent years so its inclusion on the Classic is decidedly less-than-special. Tekken 3 is one of the high points of the fighting game genre (I just prefer Tekken 2) and Jumping Flash…well, it’s a well-known Playstation game but has it aged well?

Obviously this list could have been 2-3 times longer and there would still be many popular games/series’ I didn’t get around to on the PS1 that I’m sure would make the cut on other gamers’ wishlists.

What would you have chosen? Feel free to let me know in the comments!

Urban Reign [Playstation 2]

Ever since the decline of the arcades and 16-bit home console era, there have been quests to find worthwhile modern examples of the genres that were driven close to exctinction by the arrival of cinematic, story-driven games. The beat ’em up is one such genre that flourished in the late 80’s and early 90’s but quickly became irrelevant to the mainstream. Developers attempted to take advantage of polygons and update their classic franchises but the results were a mixed bag to say the very least. After all, the likes of Fighting Force can hardly be discussed in the same breath as Final Fight…not by anybody with any taste anyway!

The PS2/Xbox/GC era was a particular low point as far as beat ’em ups go and there genuinely aren’t many decent ones to speak of. When they did appear, they weren’t quite the same as their 2D forerunners. I’ve already reviewed Final Fight Streetwise here but that game – along with Beatdown: Fists of Vengeance – included semi-free roaming gameplay as well as other features such as stat upgrades, side missions and cutscenes. The core beat ’em up objective (to smash the crap out of thugs and hoods) was still there but the purity of the arcade classics was lost.

One game that frequently gets brought up when gamers are questing for a good beat ’em up from the new millenium is Namco’s Urban Reign for the PS2. Like its rivals however, Urban Reign isn’t quite the game you might expect and simply expecting it to be a straightforward beat ’em up actually invites disappointment as I recently discovered.

A Misunderstanding…

I was expecting Urban Reign to be a 3D version of the old-school arcade beat ’em ups. You would have thought I’d have learnt by now that this just isn’t enough to sell a game in the modern era but even so, I popped the disc in and was prepping myself for perhaps ten to fifteen stages of ‘scrolling’ through streets and alleyways, punching thugs and making my way towards a boss at the end of each level. Bloody hell…get with the times old man! That shit was so 1992.

Instead, there is a brief cinematic introduction to the main character (Brad Hawk) who is apparently the new hard-arse in a town ruled by crime and violence. Brad starts working for Chinese crime boss, Shun Ying Lee, a female swordswoman equipped for the Playstation 2 generation of videogame marketing with a low-cut jumpsuit and an eye-popping B-W-H ratio that doesn’t exactly reflect a typical East Asian woman. The plot is henceforth communicated via narrated text boxes before each mission and is your standard guff about rival gangs, turf warfare and all that stuff so nothing new to see here. I was expecting cut-scenes perhaps but almost thirty missions in (yes, I’ll get to that in a moment), it was still just text explaining why Brad needed to go and beat up a rival gang boss or why Brad had to survive an alleyway encounter with a mob of gang members. Pretty soon I was skim-reading the ‘plot’ and just skipping it all. Wuthering Heights this wasn’t.

Hit the streets and go toe-to-toe with thugs sporting ridiculous names. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This was beginning to look bad. Urban Reign didn’t sell very well by all accounts and it isn’t difficult to see why. The main character looks bland, the cover for the game is boring and the usual mid-2000’s videogame tropes are all correct and present: female character with huge tits and highly impractical outfit? Check. Generic homie ‘gangsta’ enemies? Check again. Unnecessary plot that tries to hard? Big fat ol’ check. The other probable reason that Urban Reign underperformed at retail (aside from barely being marketed at all by Namco) is because the gameplay itself was likely not what punters expected. Perhaps gamers made the same mistake I did and expected a modern take on the classic beat ’em up style with the same game structure. It’s difficult to know for sure but what you actually get is something a bit different.

Instead of long, roaming stages that trap you with groups of enemies before allowing you to move forwards, Urban Reign serves up bite-sized missions that can be cleared quite quickly. The player is enclosed within a confined, limited arena-like space (be it a street, alleyway, bar etc.) with objective of simply beating all of the enemies. Sometimes you have to take down a more challenging foe in a one-on-one scenario and sometimes there are extra conditions such as defeating opponents within a time limit but the basics are the same. It feels like a series of small challenges and the game more than makes up for the lack of a complex structure with the sheer amount of these self-contained missions.

Repetition – in terms of both the gameplay and the reasons the game gives you for having to fight the next assortment of undesirables – set in with me quite quickly but after clearing thirty missions, something amazing happened.

There’s actually MORE to this game?

So I beat the thirtieth mission and FINALLY a cutscene and some form of plot progression! By this point, I was seriously not expecting it at all but here it was. More importantly, the game gives you a selection of partners that you can take along with you into battle (a roster that gradually increases as you beat key enemies and they join your cause) and this brings special team-up style attacks to the mix. You can also issue directions to your buddy and get them to take out certain enemies or initiate special team-up moves.

It’s a shame that it takes so long for the game to introduce everything it has to offer.

Before I get into discussing the actual game mechanics, I need to take a moment to really look at this late introduction of the rest of Urban Reign‘s features. For it to take thirty missions for the game’s plot to wake up and decide to continue is crazy, even more so when you consider that Urban Reign is not a walkover. I played the the game on the default difficulty setting and many of those first thirty missions were incredibly challenging (for reasons I will discuss when talking about the actual gameplay in a moment) and took a lot of retakes and patience to beat. It’s not hard to imagine gamers getting frustrated by the challenge with (seemingly) no game development being dangled in front of them like a carrot to keep them pushing forwards. That and the fact that it takes this long for the partners to become available. It’s almost as if you have been playing a massive tutorial for all this time except the road certainly isn’t your standard tutorial difficulty.

So with that mini rant out of the way, let’s have a look at the actual gameplay itself because it’s reasonably interesting for a beat ’em up. The most surprising thing for a three dimensional beat ’em up is that there is NO block/guard button. Instead, the whole fighting system is based around countering. Pushing the square button at the precise moment will allow you to avoid a strike or grapple. However, to really do damage and beat the tougher enemies, you also need to get countering and you can either do this by responding immediately with a combo or by pushing the analogue stick left/right while dodging which shifts your character behind the opponent, opening them up for difficult to avoid counter strikes or grapples.

It’s an easy-to-grasp, tough-to-master mechanic and you can get away with not being good at it for the easier missions but many bosses will simply not hit the deck unless you can consistently counter their attacks and punish them with follow-up combos and throws. What this system does in general is force you to either stand your ground and learn to counter or run away and find space but enemies in Urban Reign will catch up to you very quickly so the second option isn’t exactly reliable. It’s a case of getting good…or else!

(Analogue) Stick it to ’em

As far as the offensive combat goes, the analogue stick pays a crucial part. Mashing the attack button will unleash a character’s basic combo string but attacking in conjunction with pushing the analogue stick up or down allows to target their upper and lower body regions with the latter usually being some kind of sweep that can provide crucial seconds to breathe when under pressure. You can also attack downed characters by pushing down on the stick when next to them.

Strongman Glenn is one of my favourite available characters.

Grapples work in the same way, allowing you target specific parts of an enemy and deal greater damage when it comes to “destroying” one of three body zones, allowing for bigger damage when targeting said zone with further attacks. Perhaps it goes without saying but there are different holds and throws available depending on whether you are in front or behind an enemy. Sprinting takes a bit of getting used to because instead of double-tapping the analogue stick or holding a button whilst moving (as in many other 3D action games), you press the X button once and your character begins running automatically, only stopping once you go for another input. You can slide-tackle enemies or even run up walls and leap off to attack enemies from above.

There’s a reasonable amount going on but the real fun comes when experimenting with creating big combos of strikes and grapples. This being made by Namco, there is Tekken-style juggling and wall-bouncing which is both a help and hindrance. On one hand, you can use it to your advantage to extend combos and even grab enemies mid-air for context-exclusive grapples. The downside is that you can get destroyed very quickly by enemies when being smashed against a wall over and over or trapped in mid-air, being comboed by multiple foes. In a sense, losing feels extremely cheap when the CPU goes apeshit on you like this but the counter system does work mid-combo and in mid-air albeit with strict timing so it isn’t entirely unfair. It simply forces you to get good at the game rather than rely on button-mashing and it’s this that sets Urban Reign apart from old-school 2D beat ’em ups. There is some depth to combat here and if you want a better visual demonstration, check the game out on Youtube where there are videos from players doing an amazing job of utterly schooling the toughest enemies on the most savage difficulty.

One issue which I can’t really forgive is the fact that it doesn’t take much to stun your character and render them momentarily dizzy, leaving you unable to respond to attacks with dodges or counters. An SPA (Special Arts) move will immediately snap you out of this state but it consumes precious meter which you are (obviously) trying to conserve to go on the offensive.

Final Thoughts

There are a hundred missions in Urban Reign‘s story mode to clear and once those are polished off, there are some more interesting things to have a play with. Multiplayer for instance gives you more of a fighting chance when an actual person is controlling your partner (though the AI is actually quite solid in this respect and often wins the missions for you). There is also a Challenge mode (think ‘Survival’ against individual foes) and a Free Play mode which allows you to replay all of the story mode’s missions for a rank. This last mode is of greatest interest as you are no longer restricted to using Brad Hawk and can roll with a tag team of any two characters providing they have been unlocked. All of the main allies from story mode are present but you can also unlock the random enemies/thugs as well as brand-new characters including guest stars Paul Phoenix and Marshall Law from Tekken!

Paul is pretty epic in Urban Reign and beating down thugs with his signature moves is worth unlocking him for.

But should you persevere with the main game and go to the lengths of unlocking characters? I would say “yes” because Urban Reign might not be what most people are expecting i.e. a mindless (not meant in a derogatory way) button-mashing beat ’em up that harks back to the 2D days but the game is great in it’s own way. The combat is very satisfying once you have gotten to grips with the counter system and learnt some combos and there is genuine challenge on offer. So many missions made me think “Damn, this is impossible; how are you expected to win here?!?” but you keep coming back and trying again, slowly getting better and better at the game until you get that perfect run on a mission. True, you sometimes have to rely on flukes, CPU slip-ups or cheap tactics to win but for the most part, you feel like you have earnt that victory and it is SO satisfying to finally overcome an against-the-odds mission.

The major downside is the amount of time that Urban Reign needs to get going. Without trying to sound impatient, it takes far too long for any story progression and – more importantly – too long for partners, weapons and all of the special moves to become available. Gradually developing a character’s skills and unlocking stuff in games is nothing new but the issue here is that it DOES take too long and the game does a poor job of communicating your actual progression and end goals. This combined with the often ruthless difficulty will be off-putting to many – especially if they expected a different kind of game structure – but if you can stick with it and learn the mechanics then there is a really enjoyable beat ’em up experience here and certainly one of the best of its generation.

Nintendo kill off SNK Heroines for PS4 Owners (thanks for that)

Console exclusitivity…it sucks, right? By and large though, we have pretty much moved beyond these practices over the last few generations and while some may say that it ruins the individuality between platforms, I say “bring it on”. There’s nothing worse than not being able to play all of titles you are interested in without owning multiple systems that cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds each, not to mention the storage space required.

This generation has been pretty kind to me in this respect. Nearly everything I want to play is available on the PS4 with the only Xbox One exclusives able to invoke envy within me being Killer Instinct and Rare Replay. The arrival of the Nintendo Switch didn’t initially mix things up at all but as the decent exclusives began to flow, I was seeing more and more things I liked. The Switch is, after all, the first Nintendo console that I haven’t owned since the N64. That said, consciously deciding to NOT buy a Nintendo console will always automatically lock you out of their exclusive properties so there can be no hard feelings about not being able to experience the likes of Mario Odyssey if you make a decision not to purchase the hardware.

Unfortunately, it certainly does grate my gears when something like this happens, ‘This’ being Nintendo striking a distribution deal with NIS America to make the physical edition of SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy and Switch exclusive in the West.

It’s time to get my moan on!

It’s more fan service-y than a serious fighting game but I’m still interested in playing Tag Team Frenzy.

The game had originally been slated for both the PS4 and Switch. I had personally been aware of the game’s general release window and was looking forward to picking it up but this crappy news only popped up on my radar yesterday. Annoyingly, there IS a physical release available for the PS4 here in the UK (and – I assume – the US) but to get at it, you have to buy the ‘Diamond Dream Edition’, a big Collector’s Edition box that comes with loads of extras and weighed it at around £100. Unsurprisingly, the asking prices for copies on ebay UK as of making this post are edging closer to £200. *sigh*.

This is my own fault for being a bit of a magpie when it comes to having a collection of physical games I suppose but downloading full retail games digitally has never sat well with me. DLC, retro re-releases and indie games…sure, that’s fine but when it comes to the full fat stuff, I want a box and disc for the shelf. Call it future-proofing or obsessiveness but I feel a bit deflated if the only option is digital.

The contents ARE admittedly very cool but (a few exceptions aside) I don’t buy these kinds of CE’s anymore. They are expensive, take up too much room and I’d never touch the extras again (other than the artbook perhaps).

Then there is the other consideration to take into account: The PS4’s HDD space and how fast that sucker fills up just with regular game installs, let alone full games. So the options left for me right now are:

1. Don’t buy the game at all
2. Buy digitally (yuck)
3. Import a physical Asian/Japanese copy but be locked out of any DLC

I will likely opt for the third route even if means not being able to purchase any DLC down the line. I just need to get a good price which is a lot more difficult when dealing with imports versus domestic releases which usually drop in value quite quickly if you are patient enough.

So thanks for that Nintendo though I’m not sure that this game will be the big exclusive hit that you hope for on the Switch.

Bitter much? You bet!

The Golden Age of Fighting Games: When it happened and why it ended [Part 3]

It’s well past time that I published this third and final part of my look at the fighting game’s “Golden Age” but, well…life/shit happens and I’ve been a bit lacking when it comes to those all-important creative juices. With that said, I’m back now so I apologise to anybody who has been waiting for Pt.3 but here it is – at last. So far in parts one and two, I have declared that the genre was at its peak from 1991-2000/01 and have discussed the reasons (as I see them) for its eventual, disappointing downfall. All things have to come to an end after all but worry not for Part 3 of this mini-series will focus on the happy stuff, namely what made this point in time so bloody fantastic for fans of fighting games…

A decade of innovation

It would be an outright lie to say that modern-day fighting games don’t bring new ideas to the table but it’s a stone-cold fact that the majority of genre staples and general mechanics (that are now taken for granted) were introduced throughout the 90’s and thus is was a very exciting time to be a player of fighting games. What we tend to see in modern fighting games by contrast are refinements, gimmicks (not necessarily always a bad thing) and attempts to be as flashy as possible.

Street Fighter II kicked things off in ’91 and while I have previously said that SFII cannot take any credit for being the original one-on-one fighting game (a statement I stand by), it certainly created a template that is still in use today. Best-of-three, special move inputs (now commonly used across the majority of fighting games), play styles (grappler, charge, projectile etc.) and character archtypes were all either born or made mainstream with SFII. SNK’s Art of Fighting would introduce ‘Super’ moves to the genre (before Super Street Fighter II Turbo popularised them) and Capcom’s other fighting game, Darkstalkers, debuted air-blocking. It’s actually astonishing that for all the visual and mechanical evolution of fighting games, Street Fighter II is still running in the background.

How easy is it to forget that air blocking/guarding originated in Darkstalkers?

The next important innovation was already happening at the very same time that Street Fighter was dominating the scene however. Sega released Virtua Fighter in 1993, creating the first 3D fighting game. Comical moon-jumps aside, VF also championed more realistic fighting styles as opposed to the pyrotechnical wizardry and unlikely gymnastic feats of Street Fighter and began to carve out a niche of its own that would see major fruition with Virtua Fighter 2, a sequel widely regarded as one of the all-time greats within the genre. The likes of Tekken and Dead or Alive would follow (and overtake Virtua Fighter in terms of popularity) but Sega had got there first and created the genre’s second ‘main’ style.

So many smaller innovations were happening at the same time however. Fatal Fury experimented with plane-swapping, The King of Fighters brought team battles to the mix and Capcom’s Vs series would kick off the concept of crossovers between more than one company. Namco’s Soulblade (or Souledge in other territories) gave us weapons-based fighting while developers also experimented with taking fighting games into a more arena-based environment with the likes of Capcom’s Powerstone and Taito’s Psychic Force. Meanwhile, Super Street Fighter II X For Matching Service and Vampire Chronicle For Matching Service were quietly introducing online play to Japanese console gamers via their Dreamcast modems.

Obviously you can point out that it’s unfair to criticise modern fighting games for their lack of innovation due to the fact that there is only so much you can do with the genre and so the 1990’s would always boast the bulk of new, core mechanics. Regardless, the 90’s has to be remembered with greater fondness for this period of rapid evolution.

Virtua Fighter 2: the sort of huge leap forward that will likely never be seen again within the genre.

Art that blew us away

Outside of  the technical stuff, this was THE most incredible period in terms of artistry for fighting games. Hand-drawn backgrounds and sprites were often beautiful to behold with the absolute zenith emerging towards the latter part of the decade. The likes of Street Fighter III, Vampire Saviour, The Last Blade 2, Marvel Vs Capcom and Arc’s Guilty Gear series boasted gorgeous 2D sprites that were a joy to behold and it was fascinating to imagine how many hours of painstaking work and skill we were witnessing on our screens. Today, the same developers behind these games are using 2.5d character models and ‘2D’ characters that are actually layered over polygons as well as cinematic super move animations with multiple camera angles. All of this is far from offensive and does actually look pretty nice but it simply cannot awe in the way that fully hand-drawn characters once did.

Backgrounds and backdrops were just as mind-blowing with the very best featuring ridiculous levels of detail and – in the case of larger crossover games – lots of hidden easter eggs and cameos to pick out. These were often more impressive than the characters themselves and even earlier 3D fighting games featured some lovely, static backdrops that were appealing in their simplicity without needing to rely on distracting background action. Below is a small selection to illustrate what I mean because art speaks for itself…

Savage Reign [Neo-Geo]. Incredible levels of detail.

Tekken 3 [Arcade]. King’s stage. The distant, cloud-topped mountains in the background are a simple yet beautiful backdrop.

Tekken 2 [Arcade]. Jun’s ‘Morning Fields’ stage. So, so basic yet so beautiful. The peaceful countryside is a stark contrast to the bone-snapping combat but works so well.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 [Arcade]. One of the most atmospheric stages in any fighting game.

Samurai Shodown IV [Neo-Geo]. Ridiculously beautiful. Capcom were the masters of sprites but SNK were the GODS of backgrounds.

More Samurai Shodown IV because why not when it’s THIS pretty?

And this amazing, transitional stage from The King of Fighters ’99 that never fails to blow me away…

This is just the tip of a very large iceberg and if you (like me) have spent countless hours exploring the full spectrum of fighting games from this era of hand-drawn artistry, you will very likely have your own nominations and personal definition of the term ‘impressive’. Given the vast quantity of fighting games that were produced in the 90’s, there is so much to see and many, many hidden gems when it comes to stunning backgrounds.

Sounds good to me

Of course, tight gameplay and pretty aesthetics need suitably good audio to match and this golden age of fighting games just so happened to represent developer sound teams at the peak of their powers. Modern fighting games tend to have very orchestral ‘epic’ soundtracks, pulse-pounding techno or mixes of older themes. The former work within the game(s) and are of good quality but are usually not that memorable. The latter – to me at least – demonstrates a distinct lack of confidence on the part of the developers when it comes to composing original, catchy themes that will be remembered in years to come.

Fighting game music from the 90’s though? It stuck in your head and is the kind of stuff that gamers flock to Youtube to listen to again all these years later. Importing expensive soundtrack CD’s from Japan is WORTH it for these OST’s. This was also an era when console ports of arcade fighting games such as Virtua Fighter, King of Fighters ’96 and the Playstation Tekken trilogy featured arranged versions of the entire soundtracks that took advantage of the CD medium. Clear effort was put into re-arranging soundtracks and catchy arcade riffs suddenly gained transitions, extra layers of instrumentation and more depth in general. The best part was that BOTH the arcade and home arrangements were usually worth listening to and I can’t have been the only one who regularly switched them about in the options menus!

There are literally hundreds of amazing tracks to choose from so below are (Youtube) links to just 10 of my favourites from the era.

• Street Fighter II – Ken Theme (CPSII Version)
• Tekken 2 – Kazuya Theme (Arranged PS1 Version)
• Super Street Fighter II Turbo – Cammy Theme (Arranged 3DO Version)
• Virtua Fighter 2 – Akira Theme (Arcade Version)
• King of Fighters ’96 – Art of Fighting Team (Arranged Version)
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike – Elena Theme
• Street Fighter III: Third Strike – Ryu Theme (Arranged)
• Tekken 2 – Yoshimitsu Theme (Arranged PS1 Version)
• Capcom Vs SNK – Menu Theme 2
• Capcom Vs SNK 2 – London Theme

Those are just a fraction of my favourites and if I’m being honest, I feel that the list does a major disservice to some of the more obscure fighting games of the era as well as some of the major ones but I could genuinely sit here linking away forever to what I consider to be amazing pieces of music.

Heart and Soul

All of this – the innovation, art, music – are however, all mere ingredients that come together to form the biggest characteristic of the fighting game genre in ’91-00/01 that gives it the Golden Age status. That characteristic is SOUL. This was an era when developers were battling to outdo one another at a terrific pace, developing bigger and better arcade boards, fighting fire with fire and racing to be the first to introduce their new innovations to the market. Capcom and SNK slugged it out for the decade (before the incredible Capcom Vs SNK series paid tribute to their war), 3D fighting games evolved at a great pace and bigger and bolder sprites vied for our attention on a constant basis.

Let’s be honest: do modern fighting games feel as colourful and creative as this?

When the dust settled though, it was us – the fans – that were the real winners. Fighting games during this period felt like more than just simple money-making products (which they obviously were intended to be). They felt alive and you could feel how the developers had put so much creativity and artistry into trying to make the best possible product, pushing the available hardware to the limits and beyond (see the necessary RAM expansion cartridges for Sega Saturn ports of several Capcom and SNK games). The graphics, sound and even conceptual character artwork just kept getting better and better as each year passed and it was a real treat to behold.

Modern fighting games are still very enjoyable but there is a lot of focus on the almost clinical tournament play (as it is streamed over the internet as en E-Sport), online play and DLC. The creativity is still there but computer modelled characters and environments simply cannot stop the heart in the same way that hand-drawn animation once did. There is also so much recycling and updating of old music and stages from the past with an over-reliance on the glory days. True, fans don’t help this matter at times when they demand to see throwbacks in order to feel comfortable with a new generation of their favourite series but even so, the current fighting game scene certainly doesn’t feel innovative or aesthetically special (rare exceptions aside of course).

Taking one final, quick look at the stages and music for example, it felt like developers created these specifically to describe the characters that they belonged to, conveying their personalities wordlessly through the tone of the music and themes of the stages. Things are a lot more generic today by contrast.

This was actually a difficult topic to tackle because rose-tinted vision is a very real threat and we – as humans – love to tell the next generation how the old days were better (before they themselves do the same to another younger generation, despite believing that they won’t!). On the subject of fighting games however, I do genuinely believe that 1991 through to around 2000/2001 was the defining Golden Age for the genre. It was when fighting games had the most soul and a capacity to thrill with their visuals and move the heart with their sound. It was the birth of countless icons and still the place for superb gameplay.

And that concludes my three-part look at why I believe this was the one, true Golden Age of fighting games. I’d love to hear what others think!