Currently playing |
PlayStation
Portable:
Coded Arms; Miami Vice: The Game Xbox: Phantom Crash; Knights of the Temple: Infernal Crusade Xbox 360: Earth Defense Force 2025; Battlestations: Midway |
Metal Gear Solid
(PlayStation) Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Japan Publisher: Konami Released: 1998 Genre: Action-adventure, stealth |
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2023/01/30 |
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Manhunt (Xbox) Developer: Rockstar North Publisher: Rockstar Games Released: 2004 Genre: Stealth, psychological horror |
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2023/01/26 |
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Death Jr. (PlayStation
Portable) Developer: Backbone Entertainment Publisher: Konami Released: 2005 Genre: Action, hack and slash |
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2023/01/22 |
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Darksiders
(Xbox 360) Developer: Vigil Games Publisher: THQ Released: 2010 Genre: Hack and Slash, action-adventure |
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2023/01/18 |
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Kingdom Hearts
(PlayStation 2) Developer: Square Publisher: Square Released: 2002 Genre: Action role-playing |
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2023/01/14 |
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Breakdown (Xbox) Developer: Namco Publisher: Namco Released: 2004 Genre: Action-adventure |
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2023/01/10 |
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Mafia (Xbox) Developer: Illusion Softworks Publisher: Gathering Released: 2004 Genre: Action-adventure |
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2022/12/20 |
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Overlord (Xbox 360) Developer: Triumph Studios Publisher: Codemasters Released: 2007 Genre: Action role-playing |
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2022/12/14 |
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Blood Omen: Legacy
of Kain (PlayStation) Developer: Silicon Knights Publisher: Crystal Dynamics Released: 1996 Genre: Action-adventure |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |
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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 |