Review: The Getaway: Black Monday (PS2)

One of my first reviews on VGL, all the way back in august of 2012, was The Getaway. I claimed the game was a diamond in the rough, with some strengths (the general ideas and the voice acting) and a lot of weaknesses (the driving, the shooting, the ambiguity). Now, I've played the sequal - The Getaway: Black Monday. Did Team Soho learn from their mistakes in the first one? Is Black Monday even a full game or is it a mission pack? Read on and find out.

The game starts off with us in control of Mitch, who is a fucking dipshit. I'm sorry, but he really is insufferable. It's his first day back in the police force since, supposedly, shooting a kid in the back. Every exchange between the cops is boring and needlessly macho. Mitch also has a weirdly large head for some reason... Anyway, it's of course the same sort of affair as the first game - an open world adventure in third person with driving and shooting. After a few forgettable missions meant to introduce the controls and lay the foundation for the things to come the game finally shifts focus and lets us control Eddie, a criminal boxer, instead (and to some extent a teenager thief called Sam). The general formula is similar to the first game as well, in that we follow the chain of events slightly chopped up and through various points of view. Story progression and mission briefing is also happening in the cutscenes, like before, and sometimes over the car radio - which can be hard to pick up on since the voices are lower than all other audio and subtitles only work in the cutscenes. When they give me orders over the radio I hear one word in ten and then that's it.

"The game starts off with us in control of Mitch, who is a fucking dipshit."

The driving is also the same as in the previous game, where there's often a hidden timer and your only means of navigation is to look at your blinkers that signal left, right or "fast" depending on where you need to go (fast blinking means you've passed your turn). Well, I could technically bring up the rudimentary map and plan my route a bit but who wants to pause the game and double check the map all the time? The controls are very clunky as well, because of course they are.

So, when we've suffered through the ordeal that is getting to where we need to go it's finally time to leave the vehicle and have some on foot action. There's a heavy emphasis on all the moves we can do (as both Mitch and Eddie), such as rolling, taking people hostage to use as shields, carefully aim from behind cover, using the gun's butt as a melee weapon and in Mitch's case even use teargas. But since the controls are so stiff and awkward (yes, on foot as well) nine times out of ten I ended up just using the "snap aim to enemy" and kept the shot button down. But even then, again just like its predecessor, the game frequently picked the wrong enemy to focus on making me take a lot of unnecessary damage. There was simply no time for finesse, fiddling about with awkward controls and a thousand different options to go about a situation when the CPU emptied magazine after magazine right at me whenever they were on screen.

"the game frequently picked the wrong enemy to focus on making me take a lot of unnecessary damage"

What about the open world experience then? Well, I'm going to sound like a broken record but like with the first game, the sense of urgency is always present. There's no real opportunity to explore anything at all - it's always 'go there, more speed, do this, hurry up, the clock is ticking, move it'. And the traffic is doing its best to be an obstacle. Cars that are freaked out by you driving towards them never turn left and up on the sidewalk, they turn right and try to go in the middle - exactly where you want to drive. And there's cars cutting you off in every single crossroads in the entire game, you can never just speed through one without ending up in a crash. And I'm sorry but I don't really enjoy the city. There might be some cool vistas for people living in London to look up but for me it's just a gray and anonymous city that I try to speed through as best I can as to not run out of time. The feeling of "realism" as it were is much more tangible when inside and all the textures and small details are available to look at in a slower pace. There were times when I felt "this looks almost like an early PS3/360 game". Well, at least if I didn't move my character or tried to do anything else, because then it really felt dated again.

I'm not very positive about this game as you might have noticed, and that's not really due to the shortcomings I've described. It all comes down to the story which isn't that interesting. It has its moments, but they are few and far between. Where the gritty story and setting made up for cumbersome gameplay in the first game, here it doesn't. This means Black Monday isn't a diamond in the rough, but rather just a curiosity for the fans, or perhaps the completionist. Team Soho clearly didn't pick up on what made The Getaway "good despite its flaws", they just carried on and made another flawed game but without the saving grace.

Review: Final Fantasy X (PS2)

I initially struggled a bit to get into the game, every session felt like a newbie session (what's that, who're they, am I in the past or the future, was it Zanarkand I came from and Spira I'm in now, why should I care about any of these places or the characters in them, the main protagonist is a boring douche etc) so I tried to let go a bit of my strategy guide and just let the game show me the ropes organically. I immediately missed the Rod of Wisdom, an incredibly useful weapon for Yuna, so I went back to following the guide more or less to a T - and boy did I think I needed it. There were a lot of useful items hidden with NPC:s appearing on already visited places, who - with no hints or pointers - just casually gives them out after exhausting their dialogue a second time. I didn't want to hunt down every last single NPC and go through their oftentimes boring/useless dialogue multiple times "just to be sure" so I stuck with the strategy guide at every turn.

"I thought the liniarity would help me [...] but it really started to feel constricting"

After 20 hours or so I realized there were only a handful of items that would really suck to have missed, and the game had yet to branch out at all (it was the most linear experience I've ever had with a Final Fantasy game, with absolutely no say in where the journey was heading) so once again I felt the strategy guide wouldn't help me that much. And I thought the liniarity would help me, I often get frozen from too much freedom and having a linear path to take sounded comforting on paper. But after, like I said, 20 hours or so it really started to feel a bit constricting. In fact, this was going to be the case all the way to the end. Just before the last boss I got access to an airship and from there I was free to go back and explore secrets and hidden paths. But by that time, a solid 50 hours into the game, I was completely fed up with it. In all honesty I was pretty fed up with it already at 40 hours, so when I reached the end and unlocked the ability to do as I pleased I just wanted it to end already. I know it's an epic RPG and all, but I guess I just can't dedicate myself to a video game that long - at least not if it's a fairly uninteresting game like the case with FFX. The characters grew a bit on me, sure, but only from "they're stupid" to "they're okay for the most part".

"I played strictly out of dedication to finish what I've started"

You might wonder why I skipped from my first sessions with the game to the 20 hour mark and then the 50 hour mark without commenting on the story or gameplay mechanics. That's because I didn't think they were memorable. I played strictly out of dedication to finish what I've started, there was no interest in the world or the progress. And that's my judgement on this game. It was not interesting. And it had a fitting ending. The last fights (a couple of bosses with several formations) were incredibly frustrating with long cutscenes without the possibility to pause, let alone save. I just had to sit the hours out and if I died, it was all in vein. After getting the advice to go back, find and use "Trio of 9999" (I won't go into detail here) the end fight became much easier. Eventually the lastest last boss went down and I was finally free. Free from the daily boredom, the daily chore. I don't think I'll play another Final Fantasy for a good while.

Article: I love physical strategy guides

I love physical strategy guides. I didn't use to, mostly because I saw them as an unnecessary cost on top of the already purchased game. If I got stuck I could check a walkthrough on GameFaqs. With the introduction of touch screen phones it became even more convenient to whip the phone out whenever I got stuck.

But times change and I've slowly grown tired of scrolling through anonymous .txt files. And the convenience aspect of the phone is out the window. If the game is long then it's quite a hefty body of text that needs to be navigated through searchable chapter codes. Fiddling around with ctrl+F on a phone isn't a seamless process to say the least, it's mostly just a chore. And the ASCII-art maps were certainly getting on my nerves...

So I opted for other forms of walkthroughs often hosted at the bigger gaming sites more centered around being browsed through a smart phone. But this, too, changed from bliss to nightmare fairly quickly. Their walkthroughs were divided into chapters which I then had to navigate while dodging loads of ads and filler text (which they use to be able to serve even more ads). I felt almost abused by all the dumbed down content paired with heaps of ads and "Skip in 3... 2...", "I want to continue as a guest" and "No thanks, I don't want to join for more benefits and/or disable my adblocker" and what not. That's when the thought of a good old printed guide popped into my head once again.

I looked up a few previews of printed guides online and they were filled with everything you'd ever need to know about the game they covered and the pages were decorated with beautiful pictures and graphics from that game. I immediately saw the appeal on a whole new level. How the added expense was more than justifyed. And with that I changed my stance on physical strategy guides. The climate on the modern corporate internet is so predatory, manipulative and consumer focused that I'm more than willing to pay $20 to get a physical copy of a guide. A guide I can read without interruptions, a guide I can find my way around without cumbersome screen fiddling and failed gestures. A guide filled with illustrations, charts, maps and all sorts of creative and colorful things without watching an ad every other minute or giving up my privacy.

My latest purchase is a FFX guide that is said to arrive any day now (but it's sent from Denmark, a.k.a. the country where all post services go to die so you never know), and therefore that game will probably be my next review.

Review: Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (Xbox)

Several years ago, when it was common to have a chipped Xbox and some burnt discs, me and my girlfriend started playing Shaolin Monks and got to a point where it was evident it was a bad iso and we couldn't advance anymore. Some time later I bought the real deal with the intent of finally beating it. We gave it a try and for some reason we stopped pretty early on. Our memory of why differs so I'm going to go with mine: we got lost (we didn't pay any attention to what the characters were saying and therefore lost track of the objective) and subsequently bored. It would pass a good 10 years before I finally decided to go back to it and give it another try - this time alone. (I'm still together with my girlfriend though!)

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks is a 3D beat 'em up set in the timespan of Mortal Kombat II (a game which also is present in the disc as an unlockable extra). Shang Tsung lures Liu Kang (and/or Kung Lao since it's possible to play this in two player co-op) to Otherworld where the majority of the game takes place and to remain spoiler free I'll sum the story up with "the journey is filled with familiar encounters, predictable twists and turns, and leads up to a bombastic finale in an familiar arena". During the course of the game the player earns XP through pulling off moves and combos with which more moves and combos are unlocked. That's pretty much the jist of it.

"I had a blast trying out different combos and stuff"

I immediately advanced further than we've ever gotten and I had a blast trying out different combos and stuff. I found, however, that the unlockable moves and specials were pretty limited in quantity and I maxed everything out pretty early on - rendering the rest of the XP earned point(hehe)less. There's a lot of secrets (artwork, video clips, unlockable characters and things like that) to find, I found a fair bit but far from everything. The maps are varied and easy enough to navigate, with a few metroidvania elements thrown in there (Reached a point where you can't advance? Try coming back when you've learned new abilities.) and most areas lead up to a a roster character encounter. I had fun through most of it, some moments really showed the game's age and there were some technical issues (sometimes the voiceovers and/or music was played at 10% volume and the controls ignored some of the inputs) but I didn't fire this game up looking for perfection but for some casual fun and Mortal Kombat goodness. On this Shaolin Monks delivers.

"I can absolutely recommend it for fans of the series"

A few hours in I arrived at the final showdown which consists of a three fights long bossrush - and the third and very last boss was an absolute anticlimax. I struggled with him and went to ask the guides - all of which adviced me to keep my distance, use projectiles and go for chip damage. Close combat is mostly out of the picture. I wanted to shine, to put my acquired knowledge of the fighting to the test in the final fight, and instead I had to run around like a coward slowly grinding the boss down like a Souls-cheese. But the last boss is only a few minutes, the rest of the game is awesome (that is; b-movie fun) and I can absolutely recommend it for fans of the series.

Review: Shenmue 2 (Dreamcast)

"All in all I think that Shenmue had some great ideas that overshines the shortcomings and the tale of Ryu was engaging enough to make me want to play the sequal."

That's how my review of Shenmue ended, and now I have played the sequal. And my overall thoughts on the second entry in this series is also very (and even a bit more) positive. Shenmue 2 continues where the first game left off, storywise it's a direct continuation so in that regard it really feels like I just kept playing one and the same game. A lot of things are, however, different. A lot of "quality of life" changes have been made to alleviate the frustrating moments of the first game. My favorite improvement is that if I reach an area outside of the hours where the story progresses I get the option to "Wait", which means the time fast forwards in an instant to the time I want it to be. Also, conversations now have a few options so I can steer the topics a bit more in many cases!

"I find myself not exploring as much as I would like, because I know it's 40% loading screens"

But when things are easier to just... enjoy, without having to navigate outdated mechanics that's only in the way, other shortcomings become evident. For example, I find myself not exploring as much as I would like, because I know it's 40% loading screens. Have to open a door? 30 seconds. Want to gamble? a few seconds to initiate the conversation, a few seconds to get started, a few seconds to load the conversation afterwards, a few seconds to get back to free-roam. Need to restart the system (only way to reload a save)? A couple of minutes. Want to check out a new area? First you have to get there, it's three blocks away with a minute of loading screen between each block, and then a small loading screen when interacting with anything on the way. Most of the time I end up just going where I'm supposed to, because otherwise I've wasted an in-game day with walking and seeing a fracture of what I planned anyway. Perhaps I should've gone the HD remake route, but wouldn't that take away a bit of the awe? I mean, it's a cool game because it's on an old Dreamcast. It's all part of the charm. If it's on a modern system it'd feel underwhelming and outdated.

"it's really entertaining, in its own quirky way"

The main story progresses fairly slow to be honest, it's all the other things I experience "on the side" that makes it seem like a lot is happening. I mean this in a positive way, I feel like I've been through a lot even though I'm not particularly nearer the answer to Ryus question (who is Lan Di and why did he kill Ryu's father). As long as one is prepared to let the game take its detours, twists and turns it's really entertaining, in its own quirky way.

However - towards the end of the third disc they, to my great frustration, ramp up the QTE:s and it all becomes rather cumbersome. It's a lot of trial and error and I was starting to think "I hope they wrap things up soon" going in to each session. And then there's disc 4. It completely changes the pacing and the gaming experience as a whole. All you do through the entirity of the last disc is walk on a forest path with a girl I won't describe further to avoid spoliers. It's a mixture of walking, talking and the occational QTE. For three hours straight. Don't get me wrong, in the beginning I loved it, it felt like a fresh change of both scenery and pace and I quite enjoyed just talking about everything and nothing while taking in the scenery. But by the time we arrived at our destination I was so bored I think I almost fell asleep sitting up once. I know I had the option to skip most of the dialogue but then what was the point of the last part at all? I wanted to experience it the way it was intended. Anywho! Once we arrived this chapter of Shenmue came to its end and even though it dragged on towards the end a bit I'm still very eager to see how things unfold. The third installment is however on the PS4 so I won't be covering it on this blog. How's that for a cliffhanger.