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.

Review: Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone (PS2)

While I'm well aware J.K. Rowling is a complete idiot nowadays, I was too curious (I've heard it's supposed to be really good) to pass up on this game when a neighbour offered it to me for free. Well, was it any good? Yes and no. Mostly no actually, but a little yes. Let me explain. 

 

It starts off very stiff, it's just as bad as one would imagine a licence game made for kids to be. And then it doesn't really... rise above that. But I somewhat enjoyed it anyway! When the jarring from the awkward pauses in the horrendous dialogue, the beyond clunky controls and the awful loading times had subsided I found myself thinking "this is like a watered down miniature version of Canis Canem Edit (Bully), but wholesome". I was thinking of ways to praise its simple fun behind all the bad stuff but then it was over. I think it lasted four sittings, I had just started to warm up and feel a bit entertained when it threw its unceremoniously (pun intended, if you know you know) brief ending at me. Huh.

"It's a solid bit of casual fun from the bargain bin, but not more."

Okay so, sure, I got to visit a lot of places and see some lore from the movie and it was pretty faithfully represented (even though they obviously had to make drastic compromises), but the gameplay was just too lacklustre. There were almost some good exploration segments, there were almost some good fights - but they both suffered from being too shallow and immediately repeated too many times. I bet the kids in 2001 had a blast with it, but I'm 38 when I play this for the first time and then it's just not as good as some people will lead you to believe. It's a solid bit of casual fun from the bargain bin, but not more. And that's pretty much all I can say about it. It just doesn't evoke anything worth bringing up.

Review: The Warriors (PS2)

I've played this game a few times before. The first time was on a bad copy on an old Xbox. About four hours in I reached a mission that couldn't let me finish it due to a glitch most likely caused by a corrupt image of the disc. I later on bought the game legit (as one does) but I opted for the PS2 version since that was cheapest at the time. Me and my girlfriend then tried to beat it in co-op but it was just too hard for us. Eventually we gave up. This was at least 10 years ago, and thus I now felt ready to tackle it again. This time I had my mind set on beating it once and for all.

I haven't seen the movie but both the game and the movie starts the same, with the killing of a fella called Cyrus. He wants to unite all the gangs in the city to be able to outnumber the cops and basically do what they want - and while this proposal seems tempting for most of the gangs, one outfit is not amused at all and shoot Cyrus right then and there. In the commotion that follows everyone ends up thinking The Warriors shot Cyrus and then they have to fend for themselves. The movie then continues on with this going forward, and the game steps a few weeks back in time and tells the story leading up to this point in time.

The Warriors is a pretty standardized Rockstar game when it comes to the general gist of it. Third person view, a city to explore and cause chaos in, people to hurt in different ways and story missions to clear. Between missions there are bonus objectives available that both tells even more backstory as to how The Warriors came to be and grants the player more abilities and perks. These are highly recommended as they make the game a lot easier down the line.

"The game lets you play as many of the members of the gang depending on the mission - and they all have a slightly different fighting style. This is a nice touch."

Guns are rare. While some gangs use melee weapons most of them tend to use only their fists. A simpler time. This also makes the fighting mechanics very important since fighting is what we're going to be doing most of our time with this game. And sadly I found it a bit boring. The combo I found to be the most effective was "light/fast attack, light/fast attack, strong/slow attack" so I ended up using it throughout the game with no real tactics behind it. I threw a block in there once in a while for variation but... Meh. By the way, notice how I said "attack" instead of punch or kick. This is because the game lets you play as many of the members of the gang depending on the mission - and they all have a slightly different fighting style. This is a nice touch.

There's quite a bit of variation between missions, sometimes you'll fight your fists off, sometimes you'll be sneaking around in the shadows, sometimes you'll be running around like absolute crazy and sometimes you'll focus on graffiti. And of course a mix of the four. Between the variation of the gameplay, the different characters you'll be playing as, the extra missions and the general wealth of bonus content it makes for a pretty fun game that doesn't overstay its welcome. It's fun and varied (well, varied enough) and not too long. It's around 20 missions - so take your time and don't rush things. The whole game is narrated by a DJ who speaks to the player through the radio - which made me think of Jet Set Radio. There are more similarities (the graffiti, the quirky attitude etc) so I'm guessing Rockstar has indeed gotten a lot of inspiration from Smilebits Dreamcast gem.

Upon beating the game I unlocked an arcade machine that let me play an old school beat 'em up (with heavy influences from and nods to Double Dragon and the likes) with the characters from the game and that alone made me laugh and really appreciate the vision. It's not a rushed moneygrab to cash in on the movie - it's a fun and cool experience that had me really feeling the gang rivalry and pride with every fight and every throwup. Come on, boppers, it's time to disco!

Review: Castle Shikigami 2 (PS2)

Originally a Taito arcade game, Alfa System's Castle Shikigami 2 found its way onto a couple of home consoles, the PS2 being one among them. With atrocious voice acting, pretty bad music and generally good gameplay it quickly gained a reputation for being a mixed bag. However, the PAL port of the game was treated differently and is by many concidered to be the worst version out there. I've played it for about a week now and my verdict is as follows.

Castle Shikigami 2 is a shoot 'em up. It's got a fairly straight forward scoring system even though it has a lot of options on how to play the game. You have seven different characters to choose from, each with three types of attack - standard shot, shikigami and special shot (mostly a bomb of some description). The shikigami attack also comes in two types, type 1 and type 2, which gives the player a total of fourteen different options as how to tackle the enemies. I often find a favorite and stick with that character, but in this game there were actually a couple of characters that I ended up using evenly (those being Kohtarou Kuga Type 1, Sayo Yuhki Type 2 and Kim De John Type 2).

The five stages are divided up into two parts each with their own bosses, which makes it a quite, for the genre, lengthy experience. I've yet to 1CC (one credit clear - a.k.a. no continues) it, but I don't think it's impossible for me to reach that goal in the future. I managed to get pretty far after just a couple of days of practice so one day I might do it!

"Ten levels of crappy music is enough to get anyone to mute the TV."

The famous voice acting is cut from the PAL version all together, some argue that this is a bad move as it's one of the main reasons the game is even remembered today - but personally I don't mind at all. I've never cared about story in any shoot 'em up and would end up skipping it even if it was there. But the music? What the hell happened? There's a different soundtrack in the PAL version, and personally I absolutely 100% prefer the NTSC J/U soundtrack over what we in the EU got. Sure, it's different and makes the game stick out, but it's just so utterly boring. Ten levels of crappy music (not even comically crappy!) is enough to get anyone to mute the TV. It also runs at 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz, so there's that.

The scoring system that I mentioned briefly is centered around the shikigami attack and grazing. When an enemy is killed it drops coins that fall down the screen. If the shikigami attack is used to kill the enemy the coins are collected automatically. And the closer you are to enemy bullets the stronger your attack becomes (this is what is known as grazing where you want to be in danger all the time to net bigger numbers). The usual options one would like in a shoot 'em up is here, TATE mode, arcade slowdown, practice mode and so on. There's also a gallery to unlock and browse but honestly I've never cared about stuff like that. I buy shoot 'em ups strictly for the arcade version of the game and nothing else.

To sum this rant up I'd say Castle Shikigami 2 is absolutely worth giving a try - even the PAL version is fine regardless of what all the whiny purists say - but it's nothing exceptionally special. One of the weaker titles in my PS2 shmup library.

Review: Forbidden Siren (PS2)

I was heavily into survival horror games on my PS2. I loved the genre and played just about anything I could get my hands on. Eventually I picked Forbidden Siren up. It was supposed to take a whole new turn and bring stuff to the survival horror table that no one had ever seen before. To some extent they were right, but not in a good way. I actually ended up not playing any more survival horror games for quite a while after this. I recently gave it another go and here's what I think.

Forbidden Siren tells the story of… a few people lost in a place shrouded in fog and darkness. And something about red water. See, the story isn’t told as a regular story. It’s chopped up into fragments played seemingly in a random order. After a while it becomes apparent that the fragmented nature of the game is very much intended to be that way to give the player an unusual way of discovering the story. Say that I sneak through a village as one guy, perhaps opening a door or two. Then if I enter the same village with another character (at a later point in time) – the doors will remain opened. In the same vein things you forget to do, or pick up, can make things difficult for other situations further down the lane. The immediate problem with this is that there are minimal clues as to what to do. I followed a FAQ and still was stumped several times. At one point I couldn’t trigger a cutscene for some reason. It turned out I missed to go inside another room with another character earlier in the game – and that character initially couldn’t enter that room because I didn’t pick up a key with a third character even earlier in the game. While this is all fine if you are given instructions as to how it all was connected – this is not the case with Forbidden Siren. The cutscene wasn’t triggered and that was that. No clue. Without a FAQ I doubt I would’ve gotten further into the game than an hour or so.

Anyway, the story. Since it’s played in such a weird and arbitrary order, with lots of characters with names I couldn’t keep apart in my head – and only small events happening in any given mission – I had absolutely no clue as to why anything of this was happening or why I should care. The only thing that kept me going was that it was indeed a bit intriguing to unravel more and more of the story. Even though it was happening much slower than I could tolerate.

"Everything, from equipping a weapon to accidentally bumping into a wall takes absolutely forever in this game"

The controls are of the tank variety, with a bit of a sluggishness to them. Everything, from equipping a weapon to accidentally bumping into a wall takes absolutely forever in this game, and since it’s very easy to die you spend a lot of time replaying the same mission over and over and over again. Each time growing sicker of the slow controls and the cryptic structure. A few hours into the game I was reading in a FAQ during every mission I activated. I just didn’t have the patience to figure anything out – and more importantly I didn’t have the time to aimlessly wander around the villages in search for secrets and clues. I found myself almost reading ahead at many places so that I wouldn’t become surpriced and die – because it’s such a pain to replay everything. And the checkpoints. God, the checkpoints. About halfway through most of the stages a checkpoint is silently activated. If you happen to die at any point after this, everything you did prior to the checkpoint is undone. Picked up a very tricky to reach key? Tough tits, it’s gone. Opened a hatch for another character in another mission later on in the game? Yeah it's closed. You get the picture. And many times, the checkpoints are placed after a point of no return in the mission, meaning you have to restart the whole mission. Well, you can technically finish the mission, but without also clearing the secondary tasks – you’ll be coming back to that level again. I 100% guarantee you have to.

"When the credits rolled I had wanted it to be over for a good five hours at least"

With about ten missions left to do, the credits rolled. Leaving it up to the player to decide if that’s enough or if they want to uncover every little remaining secret and find out the real truth. I really didn’t care. When the credits rolled I had wanted it to be over for a good five hours at least. Plus, the mission after the credits seemed glitched as I didn’t meet the criteria for the secondary objective no matter how perfectly I played. Perhaps I forgot to do something in a different place and time in the game… But I wasn’t about to figure out what. Life is just too short.

Some cutscenes were very engaging and the story seemed to be quite interesting once I also read a few discussions and theories online – but this game is just such a unforgiving waste of time trying to figure anything out and slowly progress through this mess. They claimed an all new take on the genre and while it was indeed new, it was also terrible. Stay away from this game unless you really love quirky survival horror games, have a lot of spare time and the patience of a saint.

Review: Manhunt (PS2)

Ah, Manhunt. Now this is a game I hold close to my heart.

I remember when Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was released, I got it for my sixteenth birthday. The whole world had its eyes on Rockstar, the power house who pumped out success after success. Not long after Vice City people started to thirst for another installment. San Andreas. But that’s when I found out about Manhunt – which was also a Rockstar game set to be released a year before San Andreas. Initially I thought ”cool, a game to keep me occupied while I wait for more GTA!” and started researching it (as I do with most games I buy). Manhunt had a pretty hard time, as it would turn out, promoting itself. It was so gruesome and violent that no store really cared to put up any promotional stuff for it – and in some countries rumor had it that it was going to be severely censored. So… It was sort of an underdog game, with (for the time) insanely violent content and a graphical style (we’ll get to this in a bit) that was like no other. I just had to get it. I pre-ordered it as soon as it was available to do so and a few months later it arrived.

"sort of an underdog game, with insanely violent content"

Even the cover looked brutal. I remember almost feeling a bit uncomfortable staring into the eyes of that thing. I turned off the lights, put the game into my PS2 and just minutes later I was knee deep in a violent gorefest that had me dropping my jaw every five minutes. I loved it. I absolutely loved it! But it was very hard. In fact, it was so hard I soon gave up on it and kind of forgot about it until very recently. It popped up as ”Unfinished” as I scrolled through my backlog and I immediately decided to give it another go. And so, here we are. I’ve finally beaten it and I’m here to tell you why Manhunt is my absolute favorite of all Rockstar games.

The story is fairly straightforward. We take the role of James Earl Cash who is about to be executed. But he wakes up shortly after the procedure, in a dark and gritty room. There are speakers in the room and from them comes a voice ordering Cash to partake in a game of death. This voice wants to create authentic snuff films by having Cash fight through heaps of ”bad guys” to regain his freedom. And Cash really has no option. It’s either do as the voice tells him or die. So he picks up the earpiece from the tray in the room and embarks on the journey that is Manhunt.

"The sneaking is the challenging part but we do it to get to witness exquisite violence"

At first we’ll have to perform simple tasks to get a grip of the controls (it’s a third person view kind of game, much like GTA but without the cars) and the enemies are few and far between. We learn that we often have to rely on melee weaponry such as chains, sickles, knifes and bats – which means that if more than one enemy spots us – we’re as good as dead. Stealth is the name of the game as we crawl through the shadows of run down areas and sneak up on people to kill. The more gruesome the better, and this is determined by how long we charge our attack from behind. It’s a risk and reward kind of thing with three levels of goryness. I can absolutely see why this game had a hard time with lawyers and age restrictions because the way Cash kills his victims is pretty much the core of the game. The sneaking is the challenging part but we do it to get to witness exquisite violence – where people get strangled, stabbed, their throats cut, their skulls smashed to bits with brains flying everywhere. And the sounds, the gasping for air, the panic in their voices as Cash tears them apart… Man, it’s so cool.

The whole game is coated in an ”old VHS”-vibe, which ties in with the notion that it’s all part of the snuff movie making. Movie grain, static and those classic VHS artifacts and tracking issues are all present to make it feel like you’re watching a forbidden movie about real snuff. This is what I talked about earlier when I said it had a graphical style not really seen before. Not to my knowledge at least.

But it’s not all good. The later part of Manhunt is much more action focused with a lot of shooting. I really prefer the stealthy aspect of the game (something I never thought I’d say as I’m normally not entertained by stealth segments), because it’s where the game shines. The silent sneaking up on someone that’s soon to be a bloody puddle of meat. The shooting, while also very graphic, just makes it feel a bit too similar to a regular shooter – and it doesn’t really have the shooting nailed. Think of GTA 3 and you’ll understand. It’s just… a lot of auto locking to be able to hit anything at all and the controls are too clunky to feel natural. But I got through it, from start to finish in a couple of days with two instances where I had to look up a walkthrough just to get some advice. Certain areas had me pulling my hair out with over 20 retries.

When the credits rolled I thought ”Damn, minus the controls, this is a gem, an absolute gem, even today!”. And that pretty much sums it up. If you like gore and sinister themes then Manhunt is a must. No question about it.

Review: Silent Hill 2 (Playstation 2)

When I first purchased my Playstation 2 (I worked an entire summer to be able to afford it) I did it because I had heard of the new Grand Theft Auto and that it was in 3D. The thought alone was enough for me to work my butt off and come autumn I had enough to buy a console and a few games. I bought it second hand, so I did not get to choose which games came with it but I was happy as long as Grand Theft Auto 3 was part of the deal. Hiding among the other titles was this mysterious game called Silent Hill 2. I did not care to look closer at it and instead I invited some friends over and fired up GTA 3. We played it for an entire weekend and had a blast. When sunday came one of my friends stayed late to see what this Silent Hill 2 was all about, so we tried it out. Suddenly, the night was over. We played the game through the night and when the sun came up we were done. What. A. Ride.

Silent Hill 2 was the first game to really show me what games can do. What great sound design and the power of suggestion could do together to build up tension I never thought were possible in a game. My friend was equally impressed and we ended up getting Silent Hill 3 when that came out, and during the wait we laid our hands on the first game on Playstation 1. By the time I am writing this I have every Silent Hill game out there. At least that is in the main series. I even have the P.T-thing on my Playstation 4 even though it is pulled from the store. It has become my absolute favorite series of all time and I have several tattoos with Silent Hill artwork.

"The sheer terror coming from incredibly well thought out mixes of noise and deranged music is awesome."

The other day I figured I would play through Silent Hill 2 again just to see if I was being to nostalgic about it. Is it really that good even today? I have now completed it once again just to be able to say yes, yes it definitely is. It is every bit as great now as it was back then. There is something about masterpieces that makes them age with dignity I guess. The deep psychology behind every area, every enemy, every NPC encounter, every piece of history found... The sheer terror coming from incredibly well thought out mixes of noise and deranged music is awesome. The combat is clumsy at best of course, but that just adds to the stress. Sometimes it might even feel a bit unfair but it never really crosses that border and becomes all out broken. It is a matter of planning your attacks and pay close attention to your surroundings. And this is where I think some people might find the Silent Hill series a bit bland. The ones that do not pay attention to the story. There are plenty of horrifying symbolic events and details to discover, but if you want an action horror game like the later Resident Evil parts then you will be disappointed.

"I like it in Silent Hill. We should go there someday."

There are several endings to Silent Hill 2 as well, so make sure to play it different each time you come back. Something I can almost guarantee you will do. I have lost count on how many times I have visited the town of Silent Hill - both in this particular game and in the series as a whole. I like it in Silent Hill. We should go there someday.

Review: Psyvariar Complete Edition (Playstation 2)

Risk and reward. A concept often used in shoot 'em ups. But Psyvariar was one of the titles that brought it to a whole other level. This collection consisting of Psyvariar: Medium Unit and Psyvariar: Revision once upon a time paved the way for me in to loving this genre. Let me tell you about it.

(Medium Unit is the first version of Psyvariar, then they made some revisions to the gameplay and design and put out Revision. Even though they are very different in both pacing, enemy design and, to some extent, gameplay I will be focusing on Revision in this review since it is the only version I am playing.)

I was fresh out of my first shoot 'em up ever, Strikers 1945 II on Playstation, and I was looking for the next step. I found Psyvariar Complete Edition on eBay for practically nothing and picked it up. At the time I still had this vague image in my head where shoot 'em ups were unvaried, shallow and stale. Something to eat quarters at the local pub. I fired Psyvariar up and everything I ever thought I knew washed away.

"The buzzing."

Psyvariar is a vertical shoot 'em up with colorful enemy bullet patterns like many others. But the famous risk and reward is brought to a point in Psyvariar through two aspects. The first, obvious, way is to choose the harder stages (yes, we can often choose path between stages) and through this get bombarded with more enemies and points to earn. The second is the core mechanic of Psyvariar. The buzzing. Buzzing (also called "grazing", "scratching" and "scraping") is when you fly close to enemy bullets on purpose, to rack up extra points/increase in level. This means that a novice can choose the easier way through the game and avoid buzzing to simply reach the end and then start to push the limits. Personally I started to experiment with the buzzing on the easier stages until I was comfortable with it, then I went for the more difficult stages and my highscore skyrocketed.

During the gameplay the ship goes up in level which means that it transforms into a new shape and more importantly changes attack pattern. My favorite form is where I look like a cone with wings - where I can shoot from the sides as well when not focusing my shot for power. Oh, that's right, I forgot to mention that there's also a focus mode to the attack. If the player wiggles the joystick quickly from side to side the ship starts to spin and the attack becomes more powerful at the cost of ship speed. It's much like the laser attack from the Donpachi games in that way.

"It's much like the laser attack from the Donpachi games in that way."

If you beat the game on one credit while always going for the hardest stage available at each impasse you unlock a secret final level which I have yet to see because I am not that good yet. But one day I will see it. One day...

So what do I think of the game all in all? In one sentence: It is great fun. Adding a second sentence: If you have a Playstation 2 and like shoot 'em ups then I see no reason not to get this game.

Review: Ibara (Playstation 2)

The year is 2000. Raizing is folding in to 8ing and their shoot 'em up division is dispersed. One of their programmers, Shinobu Yagawa, is approached by Cave and they want him to make another Battle Garegga but for Cave. With a little Cave sprinkles on top, so to speak. Five years later, in 2005, Ibara hits the market. Another year later it arrives on the PS2. This is what I have been playing for the last week or so.

Those of you that remember Battle Garegga might agree with me that the things that defined the game was three things. The rank system (complete with suicides), the sheer difficulty and the enemy shots that often blended in to the background and became very hard to see if you did not pay attention. These treats are very much present in Ibara as well. 'Wait a minute', one might say, 'the enemy bullets in Ibara is colorful!'. That is correct, but so are the backdrops and many of the enemy projectiles are still very sneaky and easy to miss. The rank system is like before, the better you do the harder the game gets and the only way to lower the difficulty is to die. Yeah, that is right, die on purpose. Victory through suicide. Nice. The music is great, the UI (user interface) is some of the prettiest I have ever seen in a shoot 'em up (bright pinks and greens and roses in different colors everywhere) and the voice calling out powerups is strangely compelling. So serious in all the chaos.

"I think my record is the fourth stage."

Anyway, Ibara is no walk in the park. I will be completely honest here, I have yet to see the later stages. I think my record is the fourth stage. I am by no means a good shoot 'em up player but I do enjoy the genre immensely and I will keep trying to beat Ibara for a couple of weeks before moving on. Sometimes I get that lovely 1cc (one credit clear), sometimes I do not. The important part is that I have fun and challenge myself to always improve.

Review: 1945 I & II The Arcade Games (Playstation 2)

So... Yeah. I am a complete idiot. I purchased this compilation many years ago and immediately wrote it off as having severe input delay (much like the PAL version of Metal Slug Anthology which I bought and actually sold because it was absolutely and 100% unplayable with an insane amount of input delay). The other day I felt the desire to pop the game into my Playstation 2 once again to check out Strikers 1945 I which I have not played much of in any version. I quickly realized that the input delay must have come from the setup I used at the time (a cheap LCD HDTV) as it was gone when I played with an old CRT TV this time (this was sadly not the case with Metal Slug Anthology, as that game was truly borked no matter what). So, that was a good chunk of years I could have been playing these shooting game gems and did not because I was too quick to judge. I decided the time had come for this compilation to get a fair shot and a complete reconcideration.

There is two games on the disc - Strikers 1945 and Strikers 1945 II. I will quickly go through them both on their own and then summarize with a joint opinion on the compilation as a whole.

Strikers 1945
Released in 1995 this Psikyo shoot 'em up brought fairly little to the table (Donpachi was for example released the same year) but did it quite well anyway. Crisp pixels, great music and sound effects and cool bosses that transformed. With a whole bunch of stages in varying difficulty and length it made for a solid option when out quarter feeding the arcades. My only complaint about the game itself is that the hitbox is ridiculously large, and my only complaint about this port is that there still is some minor input delay present that makes the later parts of the game unnecessarily tricky. Fun fact: the majority of the pilots in the game are female.

"It has many similarities to the first game but does everything a bit better."

Strikers 1945 II
The sequal was released in 1997, two years after the first entry. This is one heck of an important game to me as it is the very shoot 'em up that got me into the genre. Granted I did not play it for all that many weeks but it got the ball rolling on me picking up a lot more shoot 'em ups. It has many similarities to the first game but does everything a bit better. This means if you have to choose between one or the other I would recommend you go with Strikers 1945 II, since they are pretty much the same deal but with extra bling in the second entry. I think even the hitbox is a bit smaller, but do not quote me on that. In this game I could not detect any real input delay to speak of even though I still believe the Playstation 1 version has tighter controls.

The final verdict
As a compilation it is a nice little bundle of two great games, but they are indeed very similar and chances are you end up playing just one of the two and then you might have been better off just getting that game on its own. It all depends on the price tag I would say. If you find it for really cheap, like I did, then it is a no brainer. If someone wants you to pay up a fantasy sum for it then pass.

Review: Viewtiful Joe (Playstation 2)

I have a history with Viewtiful Joe, and it is not of the wonderful kind. I remember I bought it many years ago trying to get in to some lesser known (well, kind of) PS2 games and gave it a go. Me and my girlfriend got pretty far, I remember we were closing in on the last stage when we met a boss that we just could not, for the life of us, beat. I was infuriated. We bought this game that started out so good and we had so much fun and then it got impossibly hard and tedious. What a disappointment to put it up on the shelf without the satifaction of having beaten it.

So... That will not fly. Not with me. Yesterday I decided to give the game another go since I most certainly are even better at games today than I was back then. Viewtiful Joe is the debut title for Clover, the people that went on to make Ôkami and God Hand (as well as a Viewtiful Joe sequal and a couple of spinoffs). They have a unique way of designing the artwork in their games, I think I would have been able to tell it was Clover even if their logo was not featured in the beginning of the game. Viewtiful Joe also combines two weaknesses from Ôkami and God Hand but I will get to those in a minute. First let us talk about Joe.

"It's energetic, frantic, violent and douchebaggy."

Joe is a douchebag on a night out with his girlfriend Silvia to watch a douchebag movie. The villain in the movie suddenly reaches out of the cinema screen and snatches Silvia. Joe jumps after and finds himself being a super hero in a movie mashup. That is pretty much it as far as story goes. Viewtiful Joe is a 2D platformer beat 'em up that is short but hard. There is seven episodes in total, where each one has two parts and a boss fight or something similar. The visuals are cartoony and does a good job conveying the over the top attitude of the game. It's energetic, frantic, violent and douchebaggy (I think they went for "awesome" here, but I do not agree). I had fun going through the episodes once again, re-learning all of Joe's cool moves and I really did not remember the game being this much fun. Nice! But then I reached the later episodes and the feeling came over me like a wave. Tedious gameplay that overstays its welcome. It just takes a bit too long to get through it, even if it is just seven episodes. So the Ôkami weakness of dragging on forever was present. And then it also inherited God Hands "enough already, it was fun in the beginning but now I am bored". In small doses Viewtiful Joe is a great action game. But in small doses the player will not be able to completely master the controls and keep up with the speed that the game demands. So... It falls somewhere in between a fast action fix and a full fledged hardcore game and it does not nail any of them.

Review: Spider-Man 2 (Playstation 2)

Spider-Man 2 is of course based on the second part of the Sam Raimi trilogy about my favorite super hero. Since it is a video game it does not have to be exactly like the movie which it is not - they have sprinkled a few extra things on it such as the appearance of Black Cat and other things not shown in the feature film. But most of the story cutscenes are indeed from the movie and they are motivating the player to progress.

The single most important aspect of any Spider-Man game is the web swinging. How is the web swinging in Spider-Man 2? It is very fun and exciting with a bit of timing and planning involved to get the most speed. With a lot of mini missions scattered around the city there is many hours to be spent just swinging around having an absolute blast with daring diving, speedy swinging and furious fighting. Although the fighting system is a bit dumbed down, to say the least, I liked it. It is nice to be able to beat some bad guys up without having to train for ages. The missions range from defeating random enemies to rescuing a few innocents from accidents and robberies, which can be a bit tedious at times since it is rather repetetive. But on the other hand these missions are almost completely optional and can be done if the player desires to do so.

"The voice acting. It is absolutely horrible."

The graphics are the realistic type, with no "cartoonish" look, and they hold up for the most part. I would not say it looks great during in-game cutscenes but it does not look bad, the city looks alive and does not suffer from any major graphical problems. There is, however, a problem with this game. A huge problem...

Let us just get it out there. The voice acting. It is absolutely horrible. I never saw myself as someone who cares all that much about voice acting in a game if it is fun to play, but this is just insanely bad. They got Tobey Maguire to read the lines for Spider-Man which is cool but he obviously was under heavy influence of prozac or some other sedative. He barely cares and read the lines so uninspired I sometimes felt like muting the sound to be able to enjoy my experience and not have some boring downer sigh words like they meant nothing. Add to this that the sound for the voices is very quiet and the sound effects are really loud - with no subtitles option - and you have a game where the player has to turn up the volume during every cutscene.

Apart from the terrible voice acting and the somewhat repetetive mission dynamics it is a great Spider-Man game which is a great buy concidering it goes for about £0.01 on Amazon.

Review: God Hand (Playstation 2)

Released in 2006, just after Okami, God Hand makes Clover's last game. It is an action beat 'em up with a story as paper thin as... as... paper... Long ago a fallen angel named King Angra was defeated with a pair of divine arms called God Hands - which Gene, the game's main character, now owns one of. He gets entangled in a battle against four demons and their struggle for world domination and that is it. But it is not the story that makes this game interesting, it is the way it is being told. It is cheesy, it has bad jokes, weird creatures, embarrasing voice acting and the list goes on. Together with a pretty high difficulty this feels kind of awesome, actually.

I think it is refreshing to see games take risks, go all in and dare to think a bit crazy, but regrettably God Hand does not quite reach the same heights as other spaced out games like for example Deadly Premonition. In its own obscure Twin Peaks style of weird storytelling it really was one of the great games many gamers will overlook due to its first appearence - that it would be a bad game. On the contrary it is extremely well thought through and details that one would concider poorly executed is actually intended and carefully planned. I can not say the same for God Hand. Yes, the story, the characters and the general cheesyness is hilarious in all its stupidity, but the way Clover portraits the game gives me more of the feeling that occurs after a plump joke has been told in the wrong company. It is just way to tasteless, it even goes past "so tastless it is funny" and all the way back to just plain tasteless.

"It has a certain charm I can embrace even when making all these mistakes."

That said, I really love the gameplay. The arcade style of fighting is very addictive and I found myself wanting more and more. Which is the best attacks to string together in which situations? What attack works best for a particular boss? It almost feels a bit like Mega Man sometimes in that regard! It is on the other hand a bit annoying that the camera has such issues and the controls could be a lot better - these errors obviously hurt the overall score the gameplay would recieve on a scale - but I can not help myself. It has a certain charm I can embrace even when making all these mistakes. It does not, however, gain anything over time. After fifteen hours I feel pretty fed up with the game. In small doses it is a blast to just laugh and beat stuff up, but as a whole it becomes rather boring.

Article: Trance Vibrator (Playstation 2)

Xbox and Gamecube both have their share of different accessories. The Dreamcast have many accessories. But the one accessory that really made my eyebrows jump up in the air when I first heard about it - is the Trance Vibrator.

The Trance Vibrator was sold in a special edition of the rythm based railshooter Rez. It came with an USB cable to be plugged into the console and a washable pouch to keep it in. Yes, washable. When running the game - the vibrator... vibrates. Apparantly a lot, I have not had the delightful chance to try it out but from what I hear it is much stronger than the built in rumble feature in the Dual Shock 2 controllers.

Since the release of this... interesting, to say the least, accessory it has been the subject of reversed engineering and is now also sold as a general PC peripheral for those long hot nights of playing Minesweeper.

So now you do not have to answer something conventional like "the Samba de Amigo maracas!" when asked about your favorite accessory, now you can shout "the Trance Vibrator!" from the top of your lungs.

Article: Top 5 The Biggest Letdowns of Playstation 2

First of all I would like to say that this list is based only on my own personal opinions and experiences. There might be, as one would call it, worse games for the Playstation 2 and some might not agree that the games presented here was in fact letdowns - but that is fine. Just drop a comment or two if you want to share.

Now then, with that out of the way - let us dig in to the list! 


5. Twisted Metal Black
I have always liked the Twisted Metal concept. I also thought I lived in a part of the world that was not so picky in what to pass when it comes to censoring. Unfortunately, I was wrong. While the gameplay is intact, and this is why it only makes it to place number five, the cutscenes are just that. Cut. Cut out completely, rendering the game completely storyless. Now, I have seen the footage on YouTube and yes I can agree that this might not be appealing to worried parents and deeply religious people but I mean come on. There is just no real reason for leaving the goodies out. And I really hate censorship.

4. 1945 1&2 The Arcade Games
Two decent shoot 'em up's for the price of a half one? Why yes please! Oh, wait... What happened to the controls? I do not know if you guys are familiar with the genre that is shoot 'em up, but there is quite some precision involved in advancing in these games. Precision that is effectively destroyed when not optimizing the controls - which causes an ever so slight delay. Who wants to play a demanding shoot 'em up with crappy controls? Not me.

3. Forbidden Siren
I am a big fan of survival horror. Especially the ones involving a good story, sinister sites and a cool gameplay twist. In Forbidden Siren it was said you could sightjack any other person, be it friend or foe, to see what they see. The characters are not soldiers with perfect aim, the surroundings are not laid out to form a logic path to take. It really feels like being lost in the dark with danger at every turn. The difficulty make the player feel very helpless which adds to the tension - but here is where it all goes pear shaped. The difficulty is not only in aiming and fighting, it is almost impossible to clear an area without having to try it multiple times. And I really mean multiple. The pure trial and error shatters every notion of fear down into a fine powder of frustration and boredom. The story is complicated as all hell and there is many characters to follow on top of this. It just does not feel like a survival horror, it feels like an extremely complicated game made for experts who wants a project to calculate.

2. Metal Slug Anthology
We are closing in on the absolute biggest letdown of my Playstation 2 experience - and Metal Slug Anthology almost made it there. If you like games to be tough in a sweet old school kind of way then you most probably already know all about Metal Slug. How this collection, Metal Slug Anthology, contains seven Metal Slugs plus extras. It truly is a must buy! But the PAL version is suffering from the very same problem 1945 1&2 The Arcade Games was. The controls. It is a very noticable delay between pressing a button and seeing the on-screen result. This makes this wonderful collection completely useless since none of the games can be controlled in a satisfactory way.

1. Ico
The reason this game ended up on the top place of my all time biggest letdowns of Playstation 2 is mostly because of my expectations. I expected an emotional journey surpassing everything else I had up to then experienced. With trembling fingers I started playing what was called a true masterpiece and so I met her. Yorda. The girl you are supposed to help by leading her through the castles pussles and defend from haunting dark beings. Well, let me put it this way. From the moment I met this utterly retarded girl, incapable of any brain activity or logic movement on her own, Ico was horrendous. I clearly saw what needed to be done and did it quite effortless, but to get that fruitbrained excuse of a NPC to follow in my steps was easier said than done. Since we got off on the wrong foot right off the bat it only got worse. My frustration grew with every trial that eventually I truly hated her. I wanted to go Duck Hunt on her ass and just never ever look back. Ico made me feel real feelings, oh yes it did, I felt real hate for the first time in a video game.

Review: Rygar: The Legendary Adventure (Playstation 2)

Everything starts on an island called Argus. The princess Harmonia is holding a ceremony in which Rygar recieves a wreath (totally worth it) for his victory in a war he has been poking around in. Suddenly the party is crashed by the titans, also known as the not so happy campers, with Echidna in front. Echidna and Ikaros kidnaps the princess (you do not say!) and a furious minotaur pushes Rygar down a hole in the ground. Rygar obviously survives the fall and immediately finds the Diskarmor, the shield we remember from the arcades and the NES game. Rygar is briefed by the gods to stop the titans and save the princess in order to create justice, peace and all that. The story in this game is as shallow and sloppy as the game itself. It is cheesy, filled with embarrassing voice actors and... and... pretty graphics. Does not look to bad at all.

Pretty soon you get control over Rygar and the very first thing you notice is that the camera is not playing nice. Incredibly stupid (and locked) angles that changes without warning rendering the player blind or Rygar falls off a cliff or something since the controls get switched around together with the predetermined angles. In some narrow spaces it can get almost impossible to understand where you are or if you are in fact going backwards again.

"The battle system (and the HUD) reminds me of God of War that way, only much much worse."

When Rygar attacks, he freezes. And there is no target system available so if you miss your opponent with an inch then they can go around and hit you from the side long before you regain control of Rygar again. If you happen to press the button a second or maybe third time in all haste your attack becomes even longer and more time consuming. The battle system (and the HUD) reminds me of God of War that way, only much much worse. By the way, this came along three or four years before God of War - maybe Rygar inspired the people at Santa Monica? Anyway, you get a few different shields to play with (and switch between, again, just like in God of War), that can be upgraded with the points recieved from killing enemies (you know, like in...) and you can also put Mystic Stones on them. Nothing seems to matter all that much, I did not do especially much more damage in the end of the game compared to in the beginning, despite the fact that I maxed everything. During the course of the game you also unlock new skills and attacks, for example summons where you can call in different creatures to help you. But they miss as easily as the regular attacks and in two out of five times you wasted your magic.

The surroundings are very nice. It is beautiful and there is a lot of platforming to deal with, even if not all is great. There is many things to explore and loose threads that get left behind so that you can come back in a later stage of the game when you are better equipped. What really bugs me is the enemies. They are as mundane as they are few - there is maybe three different enemies throughout the game, and two of them are just variations of each other. They die from a couple of hits and become perfectly harmless really fast - you kind of just regard them as point containers instead of opponents - and that makes you feel very safe which of course makes you feel very bored. The save spots become redundant both because the low difficulty and the high frequency of them.

"I got the option to play the whole game again with a pizza, which sounded fun, but the game is too bland to go through again."

Every now and then a boss emerges, some cooler than others, and they all have one thing in common. Place Rygar in front of them and just spam the square button. They do however present some challenge when you are closing in on the end, but to just make every boss really easy pretty much except the last boss in its three stages is just unbalanced.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure is short. It took me three hours and two minutes to finish it - and that is even after counting the times I got lost. This is being compensated by having a load of unlockables in form of images, videos, game modes and other surprises. You can play certain stages one at a time, you can play on Hard (and after that; Legendary) and there is even a mini game where you enter a stage, kill every enemy, rince and repeat. Depending on how well the player did during the game there is also different versions of the weapon - I got the option to play the whole game again with a pizza, which sounded fun, but the game is too bland to go through again.

Review: Bully (Playstation 2)

Kids are cruel. I chose to open with a cliché, if Rockstar can then so can I. Bully is basically a little smaller and a little more boring clone of Grand Theft Auto, which is about the same thing as before. Respect!

It all begins with Jimmy Hopkins being dropped off by the Bullworth Academy - while his mother and her eleventh fiance goes off on a honeymoon. Bullworth is a school for troublemakers and punks who need extra supervision and discipline. Here rules the law of the jungle, the one who does not bully gets bullied. Just like in the Grand Theft Auto series the story is being guided forward by missions you chose to pursue in order to advance in the social ladder. At the school there are a number of stereotype groups, including snobs, nerds and jocks - everyone reacts to Jimmy depending on how you behave. 
 
Instead of guns and batons there is a rascal arsenal, just as predictable as it is, in fact, charming. Firecrackers, stink bombs, marbles, slingshots etc are some of the toys you can have fun with and the slingshot is upgradable. Common fights are in spite of this the most fun way to go, the attitude of the opponent goes from bad ass to frightened and humiliated. But look out when entering a fight, if a prefect catches you there will be a punishment in form of detention (mowing lawns). The school prefects acts as policemen and are almost impossible to shake off if you are not well prepared. As the game progresses, you can, however, be better at verbal excuses and get away with minor offenses, I will talk more about this later, but it does not really matter - the violence is not easy to get away with.One is early on introduced to Jimmy's skateboard, which honestly is extremely awkward. I was excited when I first heard about it but Jimmy's legs becomes completely stiff when riding and the speed increase is very very slight. Thank god for the bikes on the other hand, which you can buy in shops all over town. But the town is not available in the beginning, you have enough to do in the schoolyard. And they really put in some effort in designing the schoolyard, it is a nice environment that makes me want to explore my surroundings although most doors are just flat surfaces unable to open. When the game opens up to the outer areas and gives Jimmy things to do outside the school premises it becomes ebvious that it was the school they worked the most on - the rest of the town looks mediocre and is full of bugs. It is not uncommon to be able to go completely past buildings before they are rendered properly. Certain voice overs are late or absent, terrain textures do not load... Sometimes I felt as if the game just was not finished.

"I would not recommend this as a first choice when it comes to open world sandbox games but it definitely is worth a look."

But back to school, most of the stuff happens there anyway. There are classes to take, built around various mini games - which if completed results in upgrades depending on the subject at hand. English class offers expanded vocabulary, art gives romantic tricks, chemistry provides access to firecrackers and so on. These classes are divided into one morning class and one afternoon class every day, so you have to get to each classroom in time before it ends for the day. Well, one day is about fifteen minutes of real time, and that makes the time pretty valuable. If you want to attend a few classes and at the same time be able to do some missions you barely have time to get home to your dorm. If you do not make it back to your bed before 2:00 in the morning you fall to the ground right where you stand - which often results in you being robbed when sleeping. It gets pretty hectic to say the least.

Where the music is unusually boring (it is one song, repeated in the infinite without interruption) the voice actors puts in some heart. I found myself eavesdropping on my fellow students discussing small everyday problems while I was looking rubber bands. Yes that is right, they have added rubber bands around the map that you then must collect for bonuses, just like in Grand Theft Auto. And they really mean business with bonuses, you unlock clothes and other special things after almost every successful mission. But the different options to dress differently is like polishing the brass on Titanic. The whole "dress-your-own-character" idea falls with the fact that it is a strict uniform dresscode at the school. No matter what kind of outfit you wear it must be changed as soon as you set foot on campus - which unfortunately is every time you want to save your game (unless you want to save in the city, which usually means that you then still have to get to school for more assignments and loose precious daytime) and also every quarter since you otherwise will faint and get robbed.Despite all this I still had fun - there was amusement in the little things, even if they were not so nicely done, and the will to put some annoying people straight drove me continue and finish the game. I would not recommend this as a first choice when it comes to open world sandbox games but it definitely is worth a look.

Article: PS2 Shoot 'em ups

When I first entered the world of shoot 'em up I was told that Playstation, Saturn, Dreamcast and PC Engine was the consoles to go for. While their shooter libraries indeed are impressive I feel one obvious console was left out. Playstation 2.

The Playstation 2 has not only many shoot 'em ups of its own (Mushihime-sama, Espgaluda, Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou, Ibara, Gradius V, Homura, Thinkle Star Sprites series, Double Shienryu, R-Type Final, XII Stag, Giga Wing Generations, Silpheed: The Lost Planet, Thunder Force VI etc) it has games that also got released on the Dreamcast (Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced, REZ, Chaos Field: New Order, Radirgy Precious, Shikigami No Shiro series, Psyvariar, Psyvariar 2: The Will to Fabricate) - and many arcade collections with older gems (Darius series, Space Invader series, 1942 etc).

Most notably for my self is the collection of Cave games on the system. (I know I wrote them as "Playstation 2 games" but of course they are arcade ports.) I thought I was going to share some thoughts on three of them, namely Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou, Espgaluda and Mushihime-sama.

Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou
The Donpachi series plays one of the most important roles in the history of bullet hell games. Not only was it one of the first to really drown the player in bullets, it is also one of the most notorious series in the genre with many beloved arcade hits under its belt. While Donpachi and Dodonpachi are covered on Saturn and Playstation, Dodonpachi Dai-Ou-Jou was far too demandning to be ported to those consoles. The Playstation 2, however, handles the game beautifully. The series' trademark chaining together with cranked up difficulty makes this game extremely intense and very hard to beat, let alone reach respectable highscores. With one of the most beautiful covers in video game history it makes for a must have in any shoot 'em up collection.

Espgaluda
This is my favorite shoot 'em up of all time. Hell, it is one of my favorite games period. Right from the get go the soundtrack is amazing, the gameplay is interesting and the difficulty is just right. If you play to survive you can get quite far pretty fast and if you play to get a highscore it becomes tricky and tactical right from the very start. The mechanics are based upon the abillity to enter a special mode where all the bullets on screen turns into points if the enemy who shot them is destroyed. While in regular mode the bullets turns into objects that fills up the meter to go back into the special mode and so on. I am equally in love with ESP.Ra.De, the games (spiritual?) prequel, but sadly that never made it to the consoles.

Mushihime-sama
This one is interesting. It does not take place in the god awful space, it does not take place in some futuristic robot-filled industrial hell, it takes place on the ground. In the trees. In the water. The title translates to Bug Princess and this accurately speaks of the surroundings. You ride some sort of beetle, fighting your way through insects and pissed off plants that literally fills the screen with colorful bullets. It is the very definition of bullet hell and at the same time it looks marvelous with clever details and more color than the rainbow. The speed of the bullets makes this one much more demanding than the others when it comes to reaction time and the soundtrack is really good here as well. Intensive gameplay with good music, pretty stuff to look at and an ultra mode so hard you will not believe it all speaks for its own. This is truly a must have.

Review: Shadow of the Colossus (Playstation 2)

- Agro! 

The horse obediently come when I call for it. I gently climb up on him expecting what is called "lousy controls". I kick my legs in the sides and... Damn, Agro starts walking. Sure, it feels a bit imprecise when I'm going out of the temple for the first time and have to go down a narrow set of stairs, but when out in the fields I ride like a... like a... someone who can ride a horse! The camera is a bit off center as a way to display a little more of the surroundings. I think to myself that it might be a problem further on in the game to not be able to center the camera completely but those thoughts slowly fade away when I realize how cozy the world is. Something that help me to appreciate the surroundings even more is the lack of background music. It is just whistling wind and a distant alarming rumble apart from Agro's steps and it is only when you stand face to face with a colossus that dramatic music appears. 

It is only lizards for companionship here on the plains, lizards you can kill and steal tails from in case you want to increase your stats. Fruits should do the same but I did not see too many of them, and in all honesty, they will not be needed. It is enough to increase ones stamina and health bar just a bit. 

Agro is a horse, not a machine. He stops and backs up when trying to ride him into destruction, he refuses to run at full speed on chaotic trails with nothing short of pure hell on both sides, he can hurt his legs in high jumps, he runs away if he is startled. In short, as I said, Agro is a horse. The sword, which along with a handy bow makes for the arsenal, reflect sunbeams said to show the way. Or at least the right direction. When you know which way you are headed, suddenly the world feel very small. It does not take many minutes to get to each colossus but do not worry, that feeling will disappear pretty quickly. Not only are the giants usually very clever when it comes to hiding in the ruins, in the lakes and up on remote - almost inaccessible places, they also present a real challenge once you reach them. Although I always imagined that I got to a colossus and defeated it within fifteen minutes or so,  it took much more than that in reality. A bit over thirty minutes per colossus makes for a decent length considering that there is sixteen of these bad boys to find and defeat.

"It is an amazing feeling to stand and look up at a colossus so big you think there should be clouds between you and the head of the beast."

  Now then, these giants. Are they as brutal as I've heard? Is it like being an ant trying to kill an elephant? Yes. It is an amazing feeling to stand and look up at a colossus so big you think there should be clouds between you and the head of the beast. It is an even more astonishing feeling to realize that you somehow have to get up there and find a weak spot to bury your sword in. You utilize the surroundings, shoot arrows and crawl around to get the colossus to leave an opening to exploit. You often need to find a little "fur" (grass) - to be able to climb up to the enormous body and from there  use all sorts of acrobatics to get to different key points (which are not always obvious or even unprotected) where you can do the most damage. There is two gauges at the bottom right of the screen that displays your life and strength. Both of them recover when you do not move, so instead of various herbs and potions you simply have to keep a low profile when you are in trouble. The strength decreases steadily when climbing, and even faster when the colossus tries to shake you off. This makes for a challenge of its own. Do I have the strength to go all the way to the other side? Should I stay here on this ledge until I recover completely? Do I have enough time for that? Where am I going exactly? 

As I said before the enormous creatures hides in forests, on plains, in deserts, in the air, in lakes... You name it. They are virtually everywhere and although they all have pretty similar weaknesses (a light blue weak spot lights up when approaching with the sword, and it is most often located on the back or head) it still feels like every encounter is unlike the other. One minute I am jumping up on the wing of a birdlike colossus diving in for an attack, the next I am trying to make another bend down so I can climb up his beard. 

When I first found out that there is only boss fights and no small enemies, and a relatively small map, I thought the game would be over in just a few hours. But when I was closing in on three hours of game time I had barely made it half way - which made me happy. The game is too sweet and cozy to be over so fast. But at the same time, it is probably not a game you can manage to play through in one sitting. Too much is too cute. Therefore, I was quite happy when my mediocre effort took me to the end after about nine hours. And when the end is closing in there is a few twists and turns that I do not want to spoil, so you have to discover the games secrets on your own.