Reviews PS2

VL2 reviews the PS2.

Review – La Pucelle: Tactics

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When hippos attack.

There was a period around two years ago when it was impossible to not read about Disgaea. Every forum, most sites, and many magazines were praising it as the strategy RPG you’d never heard of that you need to own. For reasons unknown, I never took the worlds advice. I have La Pucelle in my collection but not the reportedly amazing Disgaea. The company behind Disgaea, Nippon Ichi, made La Pucelle first but it was only brought to the West after Disgaea’s success.

And how. Mastiff has done a wonderful job translating the game and most of the voice acting is excellent. Although there is an awful lot of meowing in the game I could’ve done without. These guys should localize more RPGs, but tone down their animal impressions. →  Do the math.

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Review – Capcom Fighting Evolution

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It looks as if Capcom Fighting Evolution may be the last 2D fighter from Capcom that isn’t some sort of compilation. This is frustrating for two reasons. Firstly, something tells me they could revive the genre at least a little bit if they actually released a beautiful and balanced Street Fighter 4. Second, Fighting Evolution is not exactly the best way to end a legacy. The potential for this game is staggering, but the final product feels rushed and cheap.

The premise of CFE is simple; take a bunch of characters from different Capcom games and have them square off. The acute reader will no doubt point out that this sounds a lot like the premise behind Capcom’s plethora of “Versus” titles, though in fact they are somewhat different. →  Ask not for whom the game plays, it plays for thee.

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Review – Indigo Prophecy

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Bonjour. I made this game and am better than you, non?

About halfway through Indigo Prophecy I began outlining this review. Had I finished the review but not the game you’d be reading something very different. This is a game with massive potential that completely implodes. But still, for trying something innovative and nearly succeeding, Quantic Dream deserves much respect and anyone interested in innovation and experimentation should try it out.

Indigo Prophecy was made by the French developer Quantic Dream, who were behind the poorly received Dreamcast title Omnikron (I hate it just because David Bowie is in it). This is not a modest company; or rather this company is not run by a modest man. My first experience with Indigo Prophecy was on a demo disc from a magazine. →  What can change the nature of a post?

Review – Psychonauts

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I know this scene is somehow sexual, I’m just not sure exactly how.

Psychonauts came out to little fanfare in the broader sense, but there are dedicated Tim Schaefer fans who had been looking forward to the title for quite some time. Growing up I played a few of his PC adventure games and while I enjoyed them, I was probably a little too young to appreciate them as much as they deserved. Everything about Psychonauts appealed to me though and when I eventually found a copy, the experience did not disappoint.

In an interesting twist, the main character runs away from the circus in order to join an elite force of psychic detectives. The Psychonauts operate by entering people’s minds and ridding them of their demons. →  Katamari Damaread

Review – Kingdom Hearts 2

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Sora picks up a new, more badass outfit in KHII. Donald still uses his sailor outfit left over from his porn star days.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (let’s call it Japan), a man from SquareEnix and a man from Disney were getting drunk in a karaoke bar when, somewhere between sake and bad renditions of Michael Jackson songs, one of them stumbled upon a most wonderful idea: why not take all the best aspects of the Disney universe, throw them together with all the best parts of the Final Fantasy series, and from this soup of uberness draw the most amazing game ever conceived by man? The two set off to do just this, and on September 16th 2002, if Jesus himself had come down from heaven to bring rapture to the world, no one would have noticed because they’d have been too busy picking up their reserved copies of Kingdom Hearts from Gamestop. →  OutRun 2006: Post to Post

Review – Disaster Report

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Developed by Irem
Published by Agetec Inc.
Released 2.15.03

car falling off bridge

I hope he has collision insurance.

Disaster Report begins by introducing your setting: a completely manmade island with a newspaper that needed a reporter. While crossing a bridge from the airport to the city en route to filling that role, the main character, Keith, suffers a major setback in the form of an earthquake, the aftershocks of which continue throughout the game. A helicopter sees you, but is not able to rescue you and instead drops some provisions (this is a recurring theme). If Disaster Report were a movie, we would probably consider this premise clichéd, and dismiss it. It is a very fresh idea for a game however, and is therefore intriguing. →  Xenoblade Articles X

Review – Shining Tears

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Shining Tears
Developed by Amusement Vision
Published by Sega

Zzzz
“Now Loading” looks so much classier in Japanese.

The Shining series is over. Sure games that have the word “Shining” in the title keep coming out, like the proctology based “Shining Down a Colon” or the clearly aimed at preschoolers “Rise and Shining,” but this doesn’t mean anything. If Steven Spielberg got drunk and in his stupor decided to film himself masturbating, would the resulting video be a sequel to ET? Even if he named it ET2: ET Bone Home, I say no, it would not be a real sequel. The Shining games are past the drunken stupor. What comes out with the name Shining on it these days is the vomit that was too chunky to go down with the first flush. →  Read more, before it’s too late!

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Review – Gladius

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Gladius
Developed by Lucas Arts
Published by Lucas Arts
Released 10.28.03

Welcome to our highly experimental and likely to fail review of Gladius. The concept came to me after having a discussion about interactive reviews with my friend Robert. This is hardly interactive, but maybe it’s a step towards something, but probably it just sucks. Without further ado, I bring you:

Clicky here to see the review – it’ll open in a new window.

Review – Kya: Dark Lineage

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Kya: Dark Lineage
Developed by Eden Studios
Published by Atari
Released 11.18.03

Evil vegetable woman
Fear my banana horn.

Kya: Dark Lineage is usually compared to Beyond Good and Evil, most likely because they are both action platformers with female leads. The similarities just about end there, since BGE is damn close to the epitome of the genre, while Kya is more a stock, run of the mill, average game. Of course I played to the end so there had to have been something there that made me play it.

The game starts off with you and your brother getting sucked into an alternate dimension via your father’s basement laboratory. You arrive among a few anthropomorphized dog like creatures who are all running away from some anthropomorphized wolf like creatures. →  Games are the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

Review – ChoroQ

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ChoroQ
Developed by Atlus
Published by Takara
Released 11.14.04

Choro Race
Win this race to unlock secret driver Lindsey Lohan.

ChoroQ caught my attention because it claimed to be a racing RPG, a genre I didn’t know existed, much less one I had any experience with. I figured, even if all I got out of the ten bucks it cost was another obscure game for the collection and a few minutes of distraction, it would be a worthwhile purchase. Disclosure: my experience with pure racing games is limited to a ton of time spent with Gran Turismo 3 and a de minimus amount of time spent on a few other, minor titles (not counting the Mario Karts of course). Gran Turismo 3 was a great game, and this was apparent to a novice in the genre such as myself, because of the depth of the gameplay, and the level of customization.

 →  You’re tearing me apart lamers!