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Beat the PS2 Library!


Jeevan

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1 minute ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I know @Splain didn't count all of the N64 remasters I beat on Switch like the Turok games

I'm asking because I genuinely don't know.  Are they remasters or rebuilds?  It's difficult to remaster games from that era, but I know it's still been done. 

Again, if everyone agrees that it's a bad idea, I have no issues with that.  I just thought it was worth asking.  And for the record, all of the games I've been playing have been on original PS2 hardware since there isn't any current agreement on playing on other systems.  

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James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire is complete.

I hadn't played this game since before I was married, and probably several more years before that.  Probably 20 years or more.  I know I've played it before, but I'm starting to wonder if I never finished it because the last 4 levels were completely unrecognizable to me.  I didn't remember any of it.  I was also surprised how disappointed I was playing it again.  I remember really enjoying it in college.  I'm going to play Nightfire next and I'm wondering if most of my college memories playing this game were actually playing Nightfire, because I'm pretty sure it's a better game.

Lastly, there is no ending for this game.  No final cutscene or ending credits.  The level ends, you get your level stats as you normally do, but that's it.  You only know the game is over because there are no more levels to play.  With all of that said, this was still one of the very first PS2 games I ever played.  It was released within the first year of the PS2's release and even today the game still looks fantastic.  I remember being so blown away by these graphics and I have to say they are still impressive today.  Unfortunately, that was about all that I enjoyed with it.  

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Finished Red Faction a couple weekends ago. Beat it on Normal (default) difficulty.

This has always been one of my favorite PS2 shooters. Looks pretty good for an early PS2 game, it's got a nice array of weapons to cause destruction with, and it's a good length as well. Of course, there's the very cool environment destruction engine (I forget what they called it... GeoMod or something like that?), which is fun to play around with, but they smartly don't force it on the player too much.

The game is a decent challenge, but not too bad, although it gets downright brutal on the higher difficulties. Enemies have the insane ability to blast you with pinpoint accuracy from ridiculous distances, all while running erratically all over the place making it impossible to aim a shot at them. L1 beings up a crosshair to aim with, kind of like in Goldeneye, but I found it pretty useless and just did my best to aim with the camera and let the auto-aim do it's thing. It does have a dual-stick control scheme, which is nice since at this time that was just barely starting to become the standard for FPS games.

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Administrator · Posted
11 minutes ago, cj_robot said:

Finished Red Faction a couple weekends ago. Beat it on Normal (default) difficulty.

This has always been one of my favorite PS2 shooters. Looks pretty good for an early PS2 game, it's got a nice array of weapons to cause destruction with, and it's a good length as well. Of course, there's the very cool environment destruction engine (I forget what they called it... GeoMod or something like that?), which is fun to play around with, but they smartly don't force it on the player too much.

The game is a decent challenge, but not too bad, although it gets downright brutal on the higher difficulties. Enemies have the insane ability to blast you with pinpoint accuracy from ridiculous distances, all while running erratically all over the place making it impossible to aim a shot at them. L1 beings up a crosshair to aim with, kind of like in Goldeneye, but I found it pretty useless and just did my best to aim with the camera and let the auto-aim do it's thing. It does have a dual-stick control scheme, which is nice since at this time that was just barely starting to become the standard for FPS games.

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I didn't think to take a picture, but I finished up a play through of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time this week. I played it through a few times upon release, but haven't gone back to it in probably 18 years. It has a few issues (the combat in particular can feel like a chore at times), but I thoroughly enjoyed it overall.

I never did play the second game, Warrior Within. I'm thinking about finally picking up a copy of it, but the tonal shift seems...jarring to say the least. Does anyone have any experience with it?

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Editorials Team · Posted
13 minutes ago, Tantalus said:

I didn't think to take a picture, but I finished up a play through of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time this week. I played it through a few times upon release, but haven't gone back to it in probably 18 years. It has a few issues (the combat in particular can feel like a chore at times), but I thoroughly enjoyed it overall.

I never did play the second game, Warrior Within. I'm thinking about finally picking up a copy of it, but the tonal shift seems...jarring to say the least. Does anyone have any experience with it?

I played through it. Didn't mind the change in tone, but I do recall it having backtracking and a useless map, which made things confusing.

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Nightfire is complete.

My experience was similar to Agent Under Fire.  It wasn't as fun as I remembered in college, but I still enjoyed it.  The final third of the game is pretty frustrating and I was just ready for it to be complete.  The first third of the game has the most interesting and fun levels.  Like the previous game, the graphics , look absolutely amazing.  

James Bond 007 - Nightfire Completed 4.21.23.jpg

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On 4/21/2023 at 7:06 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

I played through it. Didn't mind the change in tone, but I do recall it having backtracking and a useless map, which made things confusing.

Thanks. That's a bit disappointing to hear as one of the things I like about Sands of Time is how compact and tightly paced it is. Oh well. I decided to go ahead and order a copy off eBay anyway. I probably won't play through it right away, but I'll get to it eventually.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Editorials Team · Posted

Gradius V

Holy shit.  Imagine adding respawns and retrievable options to a Gradius title.  Should make it way easier, right?  Instead this is like  fifty times harder.  Level 7 is the stuff of nightmares.

I didn't 1CC.  Probably more like 7CC (I'm unsure how many continues I had left).  That's good enough for me.  I'll leave the heroics to the savants like @peg

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  • 2 months later...
Events Helper · Posted
On 3/27/2023 at 12:06 PM, Reed Rothchild said:

If they end up counting, I beat Okami this year and Onimusha last year.  Is the Switch version a port of a remaster for the Wii?  Or do I have that backwards?  Kind of a whole can of worms.

I also have La Pucelle coming up for Switch.

Which onimusha?  I guess ignore the previous post 😉

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  • 4 months later...

I played through Arcade Mode on Normal difficulty in Gran Turismo 3. I played a lot of simulation mode when this game came out, but I never touched arcade mode for some reason. I hadn't touched this game in many years, but I've been enjoying my time quite a bit with it, especially after playing a lot of bad/mediocre N64 racers this year.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finished Fullmetal Alchemist and the Broken Angel last week.

I really enjoyed the anime when I watched it (probably like a decade ago now), and thought this game might be interesting. It was not.

I've seen this referred to as an action-RPG, but I definitely wouldn't call it that at all. It's strictly a beat-em-up and the only RPG elements are an unnecessary experience/level-up system and consumable items. Not that that's a bad thing, though. The real problem is that the combat is not that exciting and the game is very long and very repetitive.  Imagine the most meh beat-em-up you can think of... and then imagine that it lasts 12 hours. There is a somewhat interesting mechanic, where you can transmute objects in the environment into weapons. Unfortunately, it turns out that many of them are pretty useless.

It does have some nice animated cutscenes created specifically for this game with the original voice actors, but these are too few and far between. The story is fine (it feels like it would actually make for a decent episode of the show), but I wouldn't say it's worth slogging through the actual game to get to it. Wasted opportunity, I'd say. Not horrible, but not really very good, either.

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I cleared out the career mode of Midnight Club Street Racing (credits are available anytime from the menu). One of Rockstar's early PS2 games. It's not without it's issues. It feels like a bit of a proof of concept that could have used a bit more polish, especially the opponent AI. The difficulty is also all over the map - some races are incredibly easy and others are quite difficult, but there's not a smooth progression between the two.

Later games in the series would go on to improve on this game in almost every way, but I still mostly enjoyed my time with this one and it has a certain charm to it.

It's also interesting to note that this game came out roughly 8 months before the first The Fast and the Furious movie brought the street racing concept more into the mainstream.

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