Captain Buttbeard's Gaming Corner

Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation) Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan Publisher: Konami Released: 1998 Genre: Action-adventure, stealth
	2023/01/30
Manhunt (Xbox) Developer: Rockstar North Publisher: Rockstar Games Released: 2004 Genre: Stealth, psychological horror
	2023/01/26
Death Jr. (PlayStation Portable) Developer: Backbone Entertainment Publisher: Konami Released: 2005 Genre: Action, hack and slash
	2023/01/22
Darksiders (Xbox 360) Developer: Vigil Games Publisher: THQ Released: 2010 Genre: Hack and Slash, action-adventure
	2023/01/18
Kingdom Hearts (PlayStation 2) Developer: Square Publisher: Square Released: 2002 Genre: Action role-playing
	2023/01/14
Breakdown (Xbox) Developer: Namco Publisher: Namco Released: 2004 Genre: Action-adventure
	2023/01/10
Mafia (Xbox) Developer: Illusion Softworks Publisher: Gathering Released: 2004 Genre: Action-adventure
	2022/12/20
Overlord (Xbox 360) Developer: Triumph Studios Publisher: Codemasters Released: 2007 Genre: Action role-playing
	2022/12/14
Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain (PlayStation) Developer: Silicon Knights Publisher: Crystal Dynamics Released: 1996 Genre: Action-adventure
I always wanted to play this series, especially Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (and I'm pretty sure I played one of the games a little bit on PC, I think Blood Omen 2 maybe but I don't remember anything), but it started with this game, which is like a shitty isometric game and I hate those, so I thought I will just watch it on YouTube. But then I realized it can be played on a PlayStation Portable and it came out there officially too, and a game like this is fine for a handheld I guess. The game starts with a cutscene that made no sense to me, like who are these people and what is happening, then you get to control your character Kain who gets killed immediately and then someone from the underworld turns him into a vampire and sends him back. He wants revenge but he is sent to the Pillars of Nosgoth, which supposed to represent the world, and they got corrupted by their guardians so your job is to hunt them down to cleanse the pillars. To be honest I had to read the plot and watch YouTube videos to understand what the fuck was going on after I finished the game, it does such a terrible job at telling this story. And the gameplay is fucking awful too, like you can zoom in and you won't see shit or zoom out and can barely see anything, but you go through the world fighting enemies and exploring dungeons or cities, but hell even with a guide I was totally lost all the time (especially when you need to go back to previous areas to find new items and spells), it's such a confusing mess. You can find new weapons, armors and spells (and forms too that can help you walk through water or fast travel, those were cool) that do different things but the combat is the worst fucking shit I've ever seen in a game, I've never seen hitboxes so bad I could barely hit anything, then there are those fucking spell throwing demon assholes who can kill you by spamming that shit and you can't even do anything because it cancels your movement or combat, I just had fucking enough at some point and started cheating to get through this piece of fucking garbage game as soon as possible (and of course there are only two cheats, refilling your health and mana so I had to use those all the time). Just to say some positive things, I liked how sucking blood refills your health lol, the voice acting was pretty good (no subtitles of course) and the story was so cool, but of course I had no idea about that until I finished the game, it's a shame that such an awesome story is lost in a shitty game like this. At least as a reward for my suffering I can finally play Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (and it better be good after this shit).	2022/12/05
SWAT: Global Strike Team (Xbox) Developer: Argonaut Games Publisher: Vivendi Universal Games Released: 2003 Genre: Tactical shooter
This is actually part of the PC SWAT series, and that's the reason why I went back to play it after I found out about it. I played the demo of SWAT 3: Close Quarters Battle in the early 2000s, it was that level with the Arab store and it was after 2001 so it was fun to kill some dirty terrorists lmao. I didn't really have any idea what to do though but I still had fun with it fucking around with my teammates lol. This is very different though, it's like a very dumbed down arcade game for consoles. The story was hard to follow, most of the plot is in the loading screen and I learned more about it from the manual lmao: it's centered around two rival gangs and a new drug they want to distribute. Sometimes you are rescuing hostages (like the daughter of a mayor called Tom Brady lmao), defusing bombs or just attacking the enemy stronghold. The game is basically Rainbow Six 3 lite, like it's very simple with barely any depth to it. You can choose weapons before missions but there is no point, just go with the default assault rifle and you can upgrade it with points you earn for completing objectives (and those are always the same, arrest a number of enemies, no civilian casualties, arrest certain enemies), and you get grades after missions but they are weird because I always got an A even if I had to use all my continues (which are 5 instead of 3 saves). You have 2 squadmates, a guy with a shotgun and a girl with a sniper, they can be useful to take down enemies but sometimes I had to push them into elevators to continue eh. You can order them with the D-pad and sometimes you take over the girl who is in a different place to snipe some enemies. Combat is really easy, you have unlimited ammo lol you just need to reload, and I don't think there is any stealth you just yell at enemies to suprise them and they will surrender instantly, otherwise you need to shoot them a few times while spamming the yelling button lmao to handcuff them (and you need to handcuff everyone, civilians too, too bad they all disappear a few seconds after that eh). What I really liked is the graphics and the lighting, I don't know what this style is called but it looked very detailed (reminded me of Prey) but when you get close to walls it's just flat textures (btw it's a fun little detail that you take your weapon down when you bump into walls lol). The only ulockables are 3 short shitty action movies where you see an enemy trying to avoid your characters eh. I'm just not sure who this game is for, like tactical shooter fans wouldn't like an arcade game like this, and I don't think arcade fans would play a game like this at all.	2022/12/04
The Suffering (Xbox) Developer: Surreal Software Publisher: Midway Games Released: 2004 Genre: First-person shooter, third-person shooter, survival horror
I heard of this game but didn't know much about it, other than how you can transform into a monster and that it's pretty insane lol. This is the game where I learned about manual ACL patching with DVD2Xbox, because it didn't want to work and I couldn't find a patch online (it took me a while to figure out you can only patch games from its file explorer). The first thing I did was to watch that bonus documentary of that real haunted prison they used as an inspiration, it's so cool to have an extra like this in the game, it was really creepy and set the mood perfectly. You are playing as Torque who is on death row for killing his family, but he doesn't remember anything and thinks he is innocent. He is sent to this fucked up prison called Abbot State Penitentiary on Carnate Island, which has a history of fucked up things happening outside of the prison too, and when he arrives these monsters attack the place and start killing everyone, so you are basically trying to survive and escape the island somehow. I was a bit afraid it's gonna be scary but it's more like an action game and that's exactly what I want from horror games lol. It can be scary though sometimes when enemies just jump at you or when a random scary image pops up for a second with a screeching violin sound lol, and there are a lot of fucked up things happening like hallucinations, seeing a lot of monsters trying to kill your children or visions from the past of people getting killed, or just looking at the security camera monitor and seeing yourself with someone walking towards you but when you turn around there is no one there, it's so cool. Some of the characters are fucked up too, like child murderers, an insane doctor, little girls who got people burned for claiming they are witches, and enemies are like manifestations of how people got killed, like by blades, firing squad, gas, lethal injections, hanging, and you learn about them and the places you go through like the asylum (which is such a confusing place, I got lost all the time), caves, pirate ship, nazi plane crash site by archives you unlock. It's really cool that you can switch between third-person and first-person views, but I just used third-person because it was clearly designed to be played with that view and you can see Torque covered with blood after the massacres enemies lol. You have an insanity meter and when it gets full after killing enough enemies you can transform into this monster and just rip everyone apart lol, I barely used it because if you use it too much you can't get the best ending. But the morality system is more important, throughout the game you meet people who you can help and they will join you for a while, or you can decide to just kill them, and you hear your wife and some demon in your ear telling you what to do, obviously the good choice is listening to your wife. Boss fights can be tough, like that gas boss was the fucking worst, and the final boss is Torque's "hatred", a gigantic monster you need to kill, it was so hard to aim at it. With the good ending you remember who killed your family, you escape on a boat and you get a retrial. I watched the other endings too and the bad one was really fucked up, obviously you killed them in that one. So it's an awesome fucked up game but it was really buggy for some reason, like on that level with the raft guy it bugged the hell out, I had to restart it so many times until he finally started going, the music bugged out one time and sometimes I couldn't hear phone calls, and the inventory was a bit hard to use because the game doesn't pause. After you beat the game you can start a new game and you will get a bonus first level, and you can hear the director's voice explaining why it was cut and you wear a cowboy hat lmao. There is a bonus making of video (I always like these) and a trailer for Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, which is another game I'm looking forward to play lol.	2022/11/21
Disney's Treasure Planet (PlayStation 2) Developer: Bizarre Creations Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 2002 Genre: Action-adventure, Platformer
I wanted to play this game for a long time, I liked the movie but it's more like I loved the concept of it, mixing the old colonial period with sci-fi and going through space in a fucking sailing ship, how cool is that? Previously my only option was that shitty strategy game on PC but no thanks lol, there is also a PlayStation game that's a totally different from this one, I might play that one day. For some reason the game didn't want to start and that's when I realized I need some years old OPL version to make it work because those fuckers keep breaking games with every update they release by adding useless shit instead of working on compatibility which is the ONLY thing that should matter. One thing I quickly realized as I was playing it that this game is exactly like Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, and I mean literally an exact clone of it, the same shitty inverted camera, the same moveset, the beacons which pop up like the orbs, the hoverboard levels, the green energy which is the same thing as the flies, Morph who is like your Daxter etc. But it's like eveything is worse here, the combat isn't that fluid, the platforming fucking sucks, I keep falling off shit and can't find stuff because the camera is so fucking terrible and the level design is confusing with samey looking enviroments. But it's not open world here, you are going through portals to reach new levels and that's why you need more beacons to open them (which doesn't really make sense if you know the movie, and especially after you already made it to Treasure Planet lol). There are two types of them, the on-foot levels and the hoverboard ones. Instead of the energies here there are Morph powers you can pick up and he transforms into a jetpack, an arm to pull levers, boots to make you faster, or a hammer to break things, all for a small amount of time so you gotta do it fast. The worst part is the stealth segments where you need to sneak past cops and if they see you they kick you back to the beginning, fuck it was so bad. And then there are the hoverboard levels, good lord... You gotta pass through rings in time, do timed races, tricks, chasing something, all by avoiding obstacles, it was so fucking bad holy shit. At some point I just stopped trying, one level I just skipped entirely because I couldn't accomplish any of the tasks. There are only a few boss fights but the final boss was especially painful because of the shitty camera and platforming, and then you get the final level which is a hoverboard one of course lol, you gotta reach the portal in time to escape, it took me forever to get through it. If you collect everything you get a shitty video with all the character and enemies, so I'm glad I didn't try to do that lol. This game wouldn't even been that bad if they just had a good camera, seriously fuck every single developer who forced inverted cameras in their games.	2022/11/12
Dead Man's Hand (Xbox) Developer: Human Head Studios Publisher: Atari Released: 2004 Genre: First-person shooter
The only thing I knew about this game was the cover which I saw in stores a lot, but for some reason I thought it's a shitty poker game because it was so cheap lmao. It's the first of the upcoming Wild West games, it looked like it could be fun so I decided to play it. It has a really nice manual, it looks like an old book from that era. You are some Mexican dude who was part of this gang but you didn't like that they killed women and kids so they betrayed and shot you, and some Mexican general captured you and put you in prison. You escape after a prison riot breaks out and you go on a journey through the West to hunt down the 9 leaders of this gang to have your revenge. It's like a very simple arcade shooter, you score points for shooting at hats, glasses, windows, barrels, causing explosions, or using the environment to kill enemies by shooting at big rocks or something. The score builds up your trick shot meter which you can use for secondary attacks. Before missions you can choose which pistol, rifle and shotgun you wanna use but honestly the starting ones are the best lol. Before levels you can play poker to get bonus health and ammo but I have no idea how to play poker, I never understood the rules so I just tried to pick the bigger numbers and sometimes got lucky lol. There are usually two levels per leaders, the first one is where you are killing his goons and trying to get to him, and the next one is the boss fight, but it's usually the same boring shit every time (fuck that boss fight with the dynamites though). Sometimes there are bonus levels too which can be different, like defending a fort or going through a mansion destroying shit to cause enough damage lol. I found some interesting easter eggs, like a purple rune which must be a reference to the previous game of the developers, Rune (which I played and liked it, but it was the Rune Classic version which is like a gimped version of it eh - oh and apparently they made Prey too, pretty cool) and one time I shot a watermelon and it said "Watermelon shot 1/3" but I kept destroying them on levels and I never saw it again and couldn't find anything about it on the internet, which isn't suprising because it's such a shitty game lol. The aiming is terrible and the framerate too when you are looking around. It's just so simple in a bad way, it feels like absolutely nothing, that's what this game is. Ironically the the on-rails horse riding levels are the only thing I enjoyed lol, it should have been a shitty rail shooter instead. At least it was short.	2022/11/06
Half-Life (PlayStation 2) Developers: Valve, Gearbox Software Publisher: Sierra Studios Released: 2001 Genre: First-person shooter
Obviously I heard of this game, I knew it was a huge deal because everyone was raving about it in magazines and you could still find it in stores in the mid 2000s and people were insanely hyped for Half-Life 2, but I just couldn't care less about this game and I never had any interest in playing it until now when I found out the PlayStation 2 version is actually a good port lol (because I'm not gonna play it on PC that's for sure). You are playing as Gordon Freeman, a scientist who works at a secret underground research facility, working on portals and teleportation to other dimensions I guess when your experiment goes wrong and suddenly aliens invade the facility through portals. So now you are trying to escape and find a way to close the portals, and after the beginning the government sends soldiers to kill aliens and everyone else to make sure no one finds out what happened so you have to deal with them too. What made this game revolutionary is the interactivity and the scripted sequences and all the extra details that happening in the background with NPCs and shit and you will notice them right at the beginning where you go through your daily routine to get ready for the experiment (and I guess the portals too, maybe Prey wasn't that revolutionary as I thought lol). Sometimes you can ask NPCs to follow you too and guards will help you kill enemies and scientists open doors to help you advance. Unfortunetly I have a lot of problems with this game, and I know some of it is unfair, like all I could think off that this is like Red Faction lol, and I know that's supposed to be the Half-Life clone but that's the one I played first. There are no subtitles which is especially bad here because the sound quality is so fucking terrible for some reason. The movement sucks ass, the character moves way too fucking fast it makes platforming really frustrating because I keep falling off from ladders and shit. At least I could change the aiming sensitivity and there is a lock-on button so the shooting isn't that bad, but the game can be hard sometimes and just turns into constant quick saving and reloading. And I guess it's the fault of the PlayStation 2 but sometimes it has bad framerate issues, can't believe this fucking console has trouble handling a PC game from 1998 lmao. Even though the scripted stuffs are impressive the game can softlock you if you miss something or don't jump on a lift in time which I didn't appreciate. And fucking hell it can be a buggy mess, and apparently the PC version has this one too (why couldn't they just fix it here?), like I couldn't kill that fucking Gonarch boss near the end but you can blow up the floor under it if you have enough explosives and then jump down to the portal, I don't even know how many days i wasted on this shit to finally get to the next level (and I saw it in the next level in the sky still trying to shoot at me lmao). I think the worst thing is how it just drags on forever, it felt really tedious to play just like Red Faction, and I would get lost all the time without a strategy guide. The final boss was also a pain in the ass to beat thanks to the shitty movement and platforming, but we get a really interesting ending with that guy in the suit who you see throughout the game, it kinda made me interested in playing Half-Life 2, now there is an Xbox version but it also came out on the Xbox 360 with all the expansions as part of The Orange Box collection with some other games so I might get that one. This one had 3 expansions, Half-Life: Decay came with this version but it's a co-op campaign so I didn't try it (I might watch it on YouTube), but Half-Life: Blue Shift, where you play as a security guy trying to escape with some scientists, was ported to the PlayStation 2 by some fan which is pretty cool so I played that one. And you know what, I think I had a better time with it, it's short and on point and doesn't drag on forever like the main game, I liked it. In Half-Life: Opposing Force you play as one of the soldiers, and this is being ported to the PlayStation 2 by the same guy but he is a Russkie and I think he got sent to the frontlines to die lmao, if not then I will play it too and maybe update this one later. I know I mostly just complained but it isn't really that bad, I'm just 20 years too late to experience this game unfortunately, I think you had to be there to truly appreciate it. And I still think Halo is the gold standard of that era's FPS games lol.	2022/10/30
Vanquish (Xbox 360) Developer: PlatinumGames Publisher: Sega Released: 2010 Genre: Action, third-person shooter
I found this game on a list, it's supposed to be a crazy fast-paced third-person shooter that's really short so that's why I thought maybe I shouldn't burn a disc and it would be a bit overwhelming, but then I said eh fuck it, it looks cool lol. In the future some evil Russkies capture a space station and use it as a weapon to destroy San Francisco and you gotta stop them before they destroy New York too. The space station is huge but it's kinda just the same grey color everywhere which is fine, the graphics are nice but kinda blurry and I checked it online just in case but it's blurry in videos too lol. You are Sam Gideon a DARPA agent who comes with the army in a badass armor suite lol to find a missing scientist, and you have a sexy blonde in short skirt to assist you from your ship. This fucking cool armored suite is what makes the game epic and unique, you have these tiny rockets on your leg so you can slide anywhere at high speed lmao but you can slow down time too, it's really a fast-paced game, you are supposed to play it by sliding everywhere and just destroying everything lol and recharging behind covers, I tried to do that but still it was kinda overwhelmnig to me (and I had to play on Casual difficulty because I knew my shitty brain wouldn't be able to handle this game). As you go through the space station you destroy robots in all kind of sizes, from tiny little ones to giant fucking walking fortresses lmao. You basically have one weapon that transforms into 3 other ones you pick (and then have two kinds of grenades), and you can upgrade weapons by picking up the same one when your ammo is full. What makes it really cool is the insane shits you can do, like lighting up a cigarette and throwing it away to distract enemies, slowing down time when you throw a grenade and shooting it for extra damage or shooting down incoming missiles like that, and the epic QTEs like beating the shit out of a robot's head lmao or that awesome sword fight lol (or just dumb shit like those dancing robots lmao). And the game rewards you with achievements by killing enemies in a cool way or accomplishing things in a certain way. There are these tiny statues as collectibles but I could barely find any, but you get detailed statistics after every mission like how many allies you saved or how much time you spent under cover. There is a nice twist at the end (lmao at what the president did) and you get a cliffhanger ending which is a shame because we never got a sequel. And lol at that end credits, it's basically a rail shooter where you need to destroy meteors which are the developers, it's really clever and probably the best end credits I've seen. There is no multiplayer but apparently there is a challenge mode but you need to beat it at least on Normal so I couldn't try it out. Shame it's such a short game and that there is no sequel because I had a lot of fun playing it.	2022/10/29
James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (Xbox) Developer: EA Redwood Shores Publisher: Electronic Arts Released: 2004 Genre: Third-person shooter
One of the first games I played on my Xbox after I softmodded it were James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire and James Bond 007: Nightfire, I don't even know why because I never cared about the movies lol. The second game is technically better in every possible way but still I enjoyed the first one more. Those were first-person shooters but in this game they switched to third-person, I guess to show off Pierce Brosnan who finally voiced the character lol. I usually play PAL versions because I genuinely can't tell the difference (and I don't think there is any difference in speed in games after 2000) but this game doesn't work from the HDD without a patch and only the NTSC version had one (later I realized I could just patch everything manually with DVD2Xbox lol). But the game launched right into the first mission and I couldn't see cutscenes or the menu, that's when I realized I'm supposed to switch to NTSC video mode to play NTSC games... I never had any problem like this before because I have PAL-60 enabled and it just switches to that if the game supports 60 Hz (and I thought it works like the PlayStation 2 where it switches automatically), either way changing the video mode fixed it and I could play the game. Besides the regular actors from the movies we have some famous chicks too and Willem Dafoe who plays a Russian guy who wants to take over the world with nanobots, so you are trying to find out what's happening and chase him all over the world. It sucked that there is no aiming and you need to lock onto enemies, I wanted a normal fucking third-person shooter. And it's hard (especially that part where you are falling down from a cliff, it took me forever), but missions are kinda short and sometimes have checkpoints. You can earn Bond moments by doing cool shit like taking down enemies with the environment lol. You have a bunch of gadgets you can use, my favorite was the grappling gun which you can use to climb up and down from buildings lol. But I like the gadgets in the other games, some of them doesn't make any sense like I couldn't figure out how to use that network tap gun or some grenades, they just randomly worked sometimes. There are a lot of vehicle missions, like almost half of the game, and they control like shit like it's from Need for Speed: Underground (I actually tried playing that game but dropped it because the cars controlled like dogshit and I hate that tuning bullshit), but at least the cars look really nice with the reflections. The last missions was fucking nervewrecking with the hordes of enemies you have to fight your way through, the final boss was easy as fuck compared to it lol. You get a nice bonus video after the credits with the voice actors, and there are things you can unlock based on your mission scores, like concept arts, behind the scene pics, upgrades, new sexy outfits for the ladies lol, or a new bonus mission too. And two new game modes, VR challenge rounds and survival modes, but they suck lol. It actually has a different co-op campaign for multiplayer which is pretty cool but I couldn't try it out alone, along with the normal multiplayer because it doesn't have bots. But I realized the other two games have bots which I didn't know so I downloaded James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire again first and a save that unlock everything and I'm having a lot of fun with it, especially with low gravity setting and jetpacks enabled lol.	2022/10/28
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood (Xbox 360) Developer: Ubisoft Montreal Publisher: Ubisoft Released: 2010 Genre: Action-adventure, stealth
Man it's finally here, I can't believe I waited two years to play the next mainline Assassin's Creed game after that insane ending, I was so excited to see where the story goes next. And it continues right where the second game ended like literally, you are in that chamber wondering what the fuck just happened when your uncle shows up and you escape, and it seemed like I had the same equipment lol I guess it checked my save which is pretty cool. The first memory is basically the tutorial, the Borgias attacked your villa when you arrived home, killed your uncle and took the Apple of Eden. So you go to Rome to take it back and have your revenge for real this time. To be honest pretty much everything is the same in this game lol, but instead of a couple big cities you have one huge one with its countryside. Rome is so cool though especially how you can go to the Pantheon or to the Colosseum, the city looks beautiful and the graphics are noticably better too. Because it's a huge city you can ride horses anywhere and there are tunnels you can use for fast travel. You can leave the Animus anytime too, in fact you have to because some memories take place in real life which is another cool thing. And you can hang out in the city and look for artifacts, talk to your team members and check emails. There is virtual training you can do which I guess are like challenge stages, I only did a few of them. I finally figured out the combat in Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines but of course they changed it here lmao, you can't just use counterattack, most enemies have a specific way of defeating them, and there are executions which are basically combo finishers where you get insta kills with all the enemies around you if you press at the right time. Some of those eagle towers are controlled by enemy soldiers and you have to liberate them by killing the captain there and then burning down the tower which liberates the district and you can open shops, tunnels, famous buildings or repair viaducts there. They are also related to the biggest addition which is the Brotherhood system. You can recruit assassins (the more towers you liberate the more you can hire) and send them on missions all over Europe to level them up, and use them in battles to assassinate people or use their arrow attacks to kill everyone lol. There are a lot of secondary missions in this one too, you will do missions for different guilds (and they also have challenges which reward you with good weapons if you complete them all), destroy war machines (you can actually use them too in those missions, like a tank, a ship, a machine gun and a plane lol), replay some memories with that girl from Firenze who Ezio loved, catacombs where you find treasures and get the Armor of Brutus if you complete them all (which doesn't look as good as Altaïr's nice black armor) and find those hidden glyphs with the puzzles like that video from Assassin's Creed II, but here you actually go inside the glitch and play through it to unlock the message, it wasn't as cool as the previous one but it's still interesting, a nice mystery. There are also collectibles, Borgia flags, treasure chests (which give you items too you can sell or use them for those shop quests to unlock new stuff) and just a few feathers, I felt compelled to collect everything here too but it definitely felt more tedious this time. It was so cool that you could use the Apple of Eden near the end of the game, you can charge it up and kill most people instantly or turn them against each other, it was fucking awesome lmao. There is a big epic boss battle at the end, then you go back to present day to find the Apple, and you get another wtf ending, it doesn't hit as hard as Assassin's Creed II's insane ending, it's more like wow ok that just happened. It also had multiplayer but I couldn't try it. I really enjoyed it and it's great but it doesn't feel as insanely better as Assassin's Creed II was to Assassin's Creed, it's more like just an improved Assassin's Creed II. I really like the story in these games but I need to make sure it won't take me another two years to play the next game lmao.	2022/10/11
Beyond Good & Evil (Xbox) Developer: Ubisoft Pictures Publisher: Ubisoft Released: 2003 Genre: Action-adventure, stealth game
Beyond Good & Evil means a lot to me. I was so excited for this game after reading about it in magazines, it sounded like a game I would really love and actually it's one of the few games I bought for PC. I played it for a while but then I had to reinstall Windows, I wanted to continue playing it so I saved the save files (I still have them!) but later I realized I forgot a file and I couldn't use them. But to be fair it fucking sucked on PC, the controls were terrible and you could clearly tell it was designed to be played with a controller and I could immediately tell that again when I started playing it on Xbox. It was one of my top priorities to play this game after I softmodded my Xbox and it's weird it took me this long, even now when I got there in the release order I was still looking for excuses to not to play it, I guess it's so important to me that I wasn't ready for it and I didn't want to get disappointed. First thing I noticed was the fucking letterbox which you can't turn off, like you are forced to play in 16:9 which sucks, I can't even imagine playing this on a small TV lol. But as I was playing it again on the first day all the memories came rushing back, the lighthouse and the characters who I loved so much (the place is so comfy it made me want to live in a lighthouse), the beautiful sky, the animals, the dog who reminded me of my dog, it was so magical to experience them again. I remembered everything like it was yesterday, the hovercraft, the big flying monster who attacks you on the sea, Mammago Garage, the city, the minigame at the bar with the shark, that Propaganda song lol, the races, the island where you need to take a picture of the DayZ monster, all the way up to part where you are in the factory and trying to find Double H, I think that's where I stopped playing. The story is one of the reasons why this game caught my eyes, you are playing as a cute girl named Jade who lives in a lighthouse with her humanoid pig "uncle" Pey'j and a bunch of orphans when the aliens called DomZ attack and after you defeat them the Alpha Section, who are a military unit that fights the DomZ, shows up. To pay the bills and get the shield back up to prevent another attack on the lighthouse she finds a job to photograph creatures for a museum, and then gets a job offer from some mysterious guy to take a photo of some creatures in an abandoned mine. This turns out to be a test by the underground resistance group called IRIS Network. They suspect the Alpha Section and the DomZ work together and they are behind the kidnappings, and they want you to find proof so they can launch a revolt. So you go from one location to another, sneaking around and trying to find proof and take a photo of it. Combat is alright, you fight with a stick and can do range attacks with gyrodisks, and your companion can help out too with special attacks, which can be used to solve puzzles too. The camera was kinda weird, sometimes I couldn't really see shit, and the jumping and climbing being automatic was weird too. I think the worst part of the game is the stealth when you are trying to avoid Alpha Section soldiers, they can fuck you up easily and it was so hard when you had to pass through a bunch of them. You make money by taking photos of creatures and after every roll film you get a pearl. Pearls are used to purchase upgrades for your hovercraft, you can get them by looking around the city trying to find doors you can unlock with keycards you find during missions, winning races, chasing looters in a cavern, winning them in minigames or by killing certain flying enemies or bosses. Collecting them all gives you a pearl game disc you can play lol, and there is also a save code you can use online to unlock another disc in game for that shark minigame. It was so awesome when you get a flying ship near the end and you can fly above the islands, it's such a cute world. And then you go to space which was just wow, it looked incredible. Another hard part was the final boss where the controls change lol I could barely adjust to it. I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed at all, it's such a cute game and I love it so much, it really is a heartwarming experience. It sort of ends with a cliffhanger but unfortunately we never got a sequel. I remember a leaked footage and a trailer from the late 2000s and I was so excited but of course it never came out. There was another modern shitty game in development a few years ago but it lacked all the charm and looks like that one is dead too thankfully.	2022/10/07
Downhill Domination (PlayStation 2) Developer: Incognito Entertainment Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Released: 2003 Genre: Racing
One night I was watching a video from the 2003 E3 and it had a short clip of this game where bikes go down on an insane mountain slope crazy fast and you can kick and throw bottles at other bikers lol. I never really cared about extreme sports games and the only one I played was SSX 3 on my friend's Xbox back in like 2005, I wanted to like it but I'm way too fucking dumb to remember those complicated combos. But man this game looked so much fun, it reminded me of Burnout with its insane speed so I ignored my early PlayStation 2 games first rule to play it next (and then tried to find similar games on the Xbox). I really wanted to like this too but man it's so hard for me, I can't train my brain to focus on tricks and not hitting something at the same time when I'm going crazy fast. I switched to easy after a few races so that definitely helped, but still I forgot the tricks and the controller sucks ass, I can barely press the shoulder buttons on this tiny piece of shit, especially 4 of them at the same time. But to be honest it's still fun to just race like crazy and press random buttons here and there when I'm in the air lol. There are so much crazy shit on the map lol, like rams and deers and monks, Russkie soldiers, tourists to evade, or lava, thunders and shit, insane jumps, mines, a city to go through, it has really fun locations, and sometimes trails marked by black diamonds which are harder to navigate through but you can get more points. There are some pickups too, the green one gives you more energy so you can keep sprinting, the red gives you an insane speed bonus for a few seconds, the yellow is combat upgrade, the more you pick up the better weapons you have, and purple for more points and orange to get up immediately after you crash. And there are a lot of game modes (even though they are kinda the same), Super Career is the big one, you go through every map with 3 different modes (the last 4 races were hard, luckily you don't have to finish first, you get points for like the top 4 places and you can progress after a couple of retries), Freeride (I guess that's the normal race), Mountain Cross (short motocross race more focused in tricks and jumps) and Technical Downhill (similar to the first one but harder and more shit to avoid), and then there is Specialized Career which is all three separately (you can also make your own under Custom Tournament). Freestyle is basically a trick objective based mode, you don't race anyone just gotta complete the specific set of tricks to complete a course. To my suprise I was able to complete the first one somehow lol but of course I was stuck on the next one and I hate this trick shit anyway so no thank you, that was enough. There is an Arcade mode too but again it's like the same thing as the other career modes, the only difference is you can only use stock bikes, in other modes you can upgrade them and unlock pro bikes which have better stats (and sponsor shirts too like eBay, Amazon, Mountain Dew lmao). You earn money from races and that's how you unlock those, but actually you need to unlock a lot of shit, like music, racers and cheats too, and two game modes: in Moshbowl you basically just fight in a small arena lmao, I only played it once but it was fine, and Super Jump where you go down on an insane ramp from the skies for a gigantic jump lol, you are supposed to land to pass it and you can land on multipliers but I couldn't figure out how and just kept crashing lmao. Oh and of course the usual time trial which I'm not gonna touch lol, I'm sure there are more for multiplayer but I can't test those. It's pretty much the only PlayStation 2 game I won't delete because it can be played for fun anytime. Still though I was hoping to enjoy it more, but I'm just too dumb for games like this.	2022/09/30

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