Well this came back quicker than I expected. Here we got ourselves another series of reviews of games that I either had little to talk about, that I wasn’t able to finish, or that I had no desire to finish and decided it would be better to just dump it all on here. This will ust be five mini reviews to help me focus on bigger projects. Like the Lisa the Painful artikulo I plan on making. Or yet another buwan long project that may or may not end in me just giving up halfway through. Regardless, we got five PS2 games. I got little to say about each, so let’s talk about them here, right now, starting with one that interests me
1: Evergrace
You wanna know how you can peak my interest immediately. Tell me that your game is being developed sa pamamagitan ng From Software. The team that gave us the Dark Souls franchise. Evergrace doesn’t have the same melancholy world building and brutal difficulty, but it has something here. Released in 2000 early in the PS2’s life and with the intent of also having a PS1 version on tuktok of that, it’s no surprise to see that this game was… very dated looking. Visuals look like they were running on an older model despite this being a new age console. Not to say that it looks bad. There’s a style it’s trying to go for, at least with the first level. The nice glows mixed with the autumn setting just give off this chill vibe to it. Plus I’m a sucker for autumn settings in games. I also pag-ibig the music in this one as well. Composed sa pamamagitan ng Kota Hoshino, who worked on the Armored Core games soundtracks, he wanted heavy emphasis on voices for the music, to give off this sort of foreign vibe and I think he nails it. It sounds like a distant land with the way the instruments and vocals blend well. If I had to say anything from this game was a ten outta ten, it would be the music. Except for the store theme. What the fuck is that? If you know Evergrace, you probably know it for its sporadic tindahan theme. That said, I can’t say the same for the gameplay. While the game does use every button in combat, or so the IGN review says so, the combat is still janky as fuck. And easy too. It wasn’t until this one demon boss in the fourth level did fights become slightly madami challenging, but not even sa pamamagitan ng that much. Most fights just had me go behind an enemy, let them attack, and then hit them in the back for major damage. It’s not annoying, but it’s not exactly interesting. I will say, the boss near the end of the fourth level did put up madami of a fight for me, so maybe it does get better later in the game, but the world just wasn’t interesting me, the story wasn’t really gripping me, the constant series of backtracking and pagkarga to make a save wasn’t appealing to me, and the voice pagganap was just okay. Not good enough to invest me and not bad enough to make me laugh. Just okay. Evergrace is just okay. If you see it in a store for cheap, maybe give it a look. Otherwise, I’d say skip this one
Award: Simple But Clean
2: The Hobbit
The Hobbit game is absolute hot trash fire, boy. Let’s not even beat around the palumpong on this one, this game sucks. I never watched The Hobbit as a kid and only started watching them recently to get knowledge for this review. Gave up around the third film because fuck that, famsquad. So for all you that don’t know the story of The Hobbit, let me fill you in. Young hobbit named Bilbo Baggins meets up with Gandalf and his gaggle of dwarves, Gandolf pretty much drags Bilbo out of his house onto an adventure and wacky shenanigans ensue, as they usually do. So naturally, making a game off of it would make sense. Of course, that plus making a game based on it when the Lord of the Rings films were super big also helped to get traction. Apparently the game had decent reviews on release, even winning an award for best soundtrack. I can’t remember the soundtrack, but it was done sa pamamagitan ng Rod Abernethy, who worked on a lot of stuff from Darksiders to RAGE to Dead puwang to Dead Head Fred. Does anyone remember Dead Head Fred? It was really good. As for the positives I’d give this game… Well, I like the chill vibes of the first area, the Hobbit village (I forget the name). It eases you in nicely into the struggles you’ll run into eventually. I like how the light glows off your sword in dark areas. I like long jumping…. That’s it. That’s all I got. All the charm that some of these tiny things have to offer cannot mitigate how incredibly boring this game is. A lot of the combat is just waiting for the enemy to walk up to you, get a hit in, and the enemy will back up. It’s hard to lose a fight in this game because you will always have items at the ready to use. I get it, this is a kids game, but kids games don’t need to be this easy and dull. There’s also stealth in this game, and it can be even worse at times with how boring it is. It is difficult to ever get caught. I remember as a kid, since this was one of the few games I remember owning, and getting caught in the stealth section a lot and having to go all the way back to the checkpoint. But here, I only got caught once because I was wandering around too much and that was it. It’s pathetically easy. And they have so many stealth missions. It makes me wonder what the point of them even are. The platforming in this game gets on my nerves as well. And there is a lot of it. Not only is it basic as can be, but the camera has this way of moving around when you jump, being at an angle that makes it hard to judge where you’ll land. It makes what should be simple jumps so damn stressful and it’s kind of the only challenge in this game. And it’s a bad challenge. Oh, and glitches. This game has tons of glitches. Enemies getting trapped on walls, you getting trapped in mid falling, lip syncing just not working at times. I genuinely have no desire to go back to this game. Especially not with a stealth section where I left off. Yeah, The Hobbit is boring. Too easy to be a challenge for adult fans and too boring for young newcomers. Just play the Lord of the Rings: Revenge of the King game on the same console. madami fun and less drivel.
Award: Endurance Test
3: Psychonauts
You know, I give Tim Schaffer a lot of shit, most of the time deservedly, but I won’t deny that the man has made some good games in his time. Stuff like araw of the Tentacle, Brutal Legend, his magnum opus being Grim Fandango, and the classic cult hit of this era and the PS2 classic that I have only played recently, Psychonauts. Psychonauts follows a camp of kids, all with psychic abilities trained sa pamamagitan ng the government to become agents that can use these powers. One such kid being Razputin, who just wants to be a Psychonaut and not part of the family circus. But when kids start getting brainwashed around the camp, Raz has to prove himself sa pamamagitan ng entering the minds of many different subjects and finding the cause of all this. Let me just say that I pag-ibig the charm this game oozes out of it. All the collectables in this game are just so creative, with different larawan in the levels all pertaining to what the character of sinabi dungeon lies, cobwebs you can collect with a special item, and the emotional baggage is just baggage that is crying until you can find their tags. That’s just clever to me. I also pag-ibig the levels in this game. Even the tutorial levels like the ones for the camp counselors are great. But it really picks up when you enter the minds of all the other characters. The levels consist of some crazy stuff, like Raz turning into a giant and destroying a city inhabited sa pamamagitan ng isda people, trying to solve a puzzle sa pamamagitan ng setting up a stage play for a cynical critic, avoiding a demonic toro through a neon Mexican styled city, and my personal favorite, the Milkman Conspiracy, a neighborhood run with agents that you gotta solve puzzles to get across to get to the end. The psychic abilities you get are also really cool. Stuff like being able to fly, roll on a ball, set enemies on fire, swap between characters, and so much more. I just wanted to get all the power ups for that alone. The game is just a really charming platformer that manages to also be incredibly stylish and funny, like an old school cartoon. I will say that some of the character designs sicken me, especially with their skin mga kulay being of purple and blue. They look like Doug characters on crack. Also the final level, The Meat Circus. I heard rumors about that level and I can confirm that level is hot garbage. Super precise platforming, annoying escort missions, and the fact that it’s rumored that they changed the level because it was impossible for play testers is… something else, let me tell you. But those are just smaller problems to what I consider an almost perfect game. And you better believe I’m excited for Psychonauts 2 coming out soon. Please don’t screw this one up, Tim
Award: Hidden Gem
4: The Simpsons: Hit and Run
Here it is, the big one, baby. If there was any game anyone would recognize on this, it was The Simpsons: Hit and Run. A classic from the sixth generation of consoles, being loved sa pamamagitan ng everyone who played it in their childhood. Even so good as to wish for a sequel or a remaster, much like how Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom is getting a remaster. So this is the part where I sing this game's praises, right…. Yeah right! I don’t mean to sound like a pessimistic asshole, but I got problems with this game. Simpsons: Hit and Run is not a perfect game. Hell, I would say that the hype for it is overblown. Does that mean this game isn't’ fun? Absolutely not, I had fun playing this game in it’s moments. It offers a lot for players, especially if they’re Simpsons fans. Driving around at insanely fast speed around Springfield causing destruction, smashing into stuff and people and zooming around cars is a lot of fun, especially with all the stuff you can get, made madami so from the tons of Simpsons references in this game from a ipakita just full of good moments. The variety of cars you can get does add to stuff and almost makes up for the lack of variety in the actual campaign. Yeah, the missions in this game, while fun, are lacking. I can see the GTA comparisons now, because these missions are just as fresh as GTA missions. You got mostly four missions, collect a certain number of items, race someone to a certain spot, chase someone to a certain area, or destroy a certain car. Occasionally you’ll get new stuff like platforming on foot, but it boils down to the same stuff. Destroy this thing, race this guy, chase this car, or collect these things. It all comes down to that. It eventually got tiresome, and even downright frustrating in the final level, where the tiniest screwup could send you all the way back and you already got little time as is. You cannot fuck around too much if you want to beat this level, and you get no room for mistakes. You’ll be so tempted to press the Skip prompt after a while, but no go on the final level, the one that will really test your patience. It will put your driving skills of Simpsons: Hit and Run to the ultimate test. So, yes, Simpsons: Hit and Run is the Dark Souls of licensed games. This game isn’t terrible, despite my issues with it. I didn’t say I enjoyed the main campaign, but I did enjoy the core gameplay around it. I just wished the missions were madami varied and interesting. It’s a decent game, but holy hell, it does not hold up as this flawless classic that people say that it is.
Award: Tough Love
5: Under the Skin
And here we come to our final game of the session, a game created sa pamamagitan ng Capcom. Looking at it now, Capcom made a lot of strange stuff during the sixth generation of consoles, some connected to the classic Capcom Five, that failed event for the Gamecube. I had this game beat and wrote out months ago, but never got around to it because Nitro Rad made an April Fools video about it already before I could, you son of a B! But, whatever, I still have my own thoughts on the game that could be of some use, plus the madami people talk about this game and spread it around, the better. Because I got problems with this game as well, so my review is different now. First off, let me say that I pag-ibig the concept of this game. You have to battle with fellow aliens in order to perform pranks on humans of different varieties. You gotta know when to get the most people in your prank radius, when to swap out the right item and when you balabal yourself as a human depending on what their items are. Some items will be better than others. It’s something that can get really addictive and be tons of fun to keep trying out different stuff while avoiding the rival alien, as well as stage hazards. But that said, my one issue is how long levels can go on for. They do have some varieties to them, like both you and the rival work together to stop enemies in the level or you have to hold onto an item longer. But most of them involve keeping the most coins before the end of the level. But the levels can go on for ten minutes. I get that the game is short and doing any less time would make it much shorter than the game already is, but man can it go on for a bit. And with how aggressive the A.I. can be, it can knock all the coins out of you, take it and win at the last second, making you start over from the beginning of the ten minutes. And with the final boss with the A.I. at the height of aggressiveness, mixed with the stage hazards being super brutal, it will take a lot of trial and error to beat. That said, the strategy and the variety of the levels and items to use keep the game fresh and fun, especially if you can get some mga kaibigan together to play the game. It’s a stylish Capcom classic. Put Cosmi in the susunod Marvel Vs. Capcom and put him in Evo tournaments.
Award: Dumb Fun
1: Evergrace
You wanna know how you can peak my interest immediately. Tell me that your game is being developed sa pamamagitan ng From Software. The team that gave us the Dark Souls franchise. Evergrace doesn’t have the same melancholy world building and brutal difficulty, but it has something here. Released in 2000 early in the PS2’s life and with the intent of also having a PS1 version on tuktok of that, it’s no surprise to see that this game was… very dated looking. Visuals look like they were running on an older model despite this being a new age console. Not to say that it looks bad. There’s a style it’s trying to go for, at least with the first level. The nice glows mixed with the autumn setting just give off this chill vibe to it. Plus I’m a sucker for autumn settings in games. I also pag-ibig the music in this one as well. Composed sa pamamagitan ng Kota Hoshino, who worked on the Armored Core games soundtracks, he wanted heavy emphasis on voices for the music, to give off this sort of foreign vibe and I think he nails it. It sounds like a distant land with the way the instruments and vocals blend well. If I had to say anything from this game was a ten outta ten, it would be the music. Except for the store theme. What the fuck is that? If you know Evergrace, you probably know it for its sporadic tindahan theme. That said, I can’t say the same for the gameplay. While the game does use every button in combat, or so the IGN review says so, the combat is still janky as fuck. And easy too. It wasn’t until this one demon boss in the fourth level did fights become slightly madami challenging, but not even sa pamamagitan ng that much. Most fights just had me go behind an enemy, let them attack, and then hit them in the back for major damage. It’s not annoying, but it’s not exactly interesting. I will say, the boss near the end of the fourth level did put up madami of a fight for me, so maybe it does get better later in the game, but the world just wasn’t interesting me, the story wasn’t really gripping me, the constant series of backtracking and pagkarga to make a save wasn’t appealing to me, and the voice pagganap was just okay. Not good enough to invest me and not bad enough to make me laugh. Just okay. Evergrace is just okay. If you see it in a store for cheap, maybe give it a look. Otherwise, I’d say skip this one
Award: Simple But Clean
2: The Hobbit
The Hobbit game is absolute hot trash fire, boy. Let’s not even beat around the palumpong on this one, this game sucks. I never watched The Hobbit as a kid and only started watching them recently to get knowledge for this review. Gave up around the third film because fuck that, famsquad. So for all you that don’t know the story of The Hobbit, let me fill you in. Young hobbit named Bilbo Baggins meets up with Gandalf and his gaggle of dwarves, Gandolf pretty much drags Bilbo out of his house onto an adventure and wacky shenanigans ensue, as they usually do. So naturally, making a game off of it would make sense. Of course, that plus making a game based on it when the Lord of the Rings films were super big also helped to get traction. Apparently the game had decent reviews on release, even winning an award for best soundtrack. I can’t remember the soundtrack, but it was done sa pamamagitan ng Rod Abernethy, who worked on a lot of stuff from Darksiders to RAGE to Dead puwang to Dead Head Fred. Does anyone remember Dead Head Fred? It was really good. As for the positives I’d give this game… Well, I like the chill vibes of the first area, the Hobbit village (I forget the name). It eases you in nicely into the struggles you’ll run into eventually. I like how the light glows off your sword in dark areas. I like long jumping…. That’s it. That’s all I got. All the charm that some of these tiny things have to offer cannot mitigate how incredibly boring this game is. A lot of the combat is just waiting for the enemy to walk up to you, get a hit in, and the enemy will back up. It’s hard to lose a fight in this game because you will always have items at the ready to use. I get it, this is a kids game, but kids games don’t need to be this easy and dull. There’s also stealth in this game, and it can be even worse at times with how boring it is. It is difficult to ever get caught. I remember as a kid, since this was one of the few games I remember owning, and getting caught in the stealth section a lot and having to go all the way back to the checkpoint. But here, I only got caught once because I was wandering around too much and that was it. It’s pathetically easy. And they have so many stealth missions. It makes me wonder what the point of them even are. The platforming in this game gets on my nerves as well. And there is a lot of it. Not only is it basic as can be, but the camera has this way of moving around when you jump, being at an angle that makes it hard to judge where you’ll land. It makes what should be simple jumps so damn stressful and it’s kind of the only challenge in this game. And it’s a bad challenge. Oh, and glitches. This game has tons of glitches. Enemies getting trapped on walls, you getting trapped in mid falling, lip syncing just not working at times. I genuinely have no desire to go back to this game. Especially not with a stealth section where I left off. Yeah, The Hobbit is boring. Too easy to be a challenge for adult fans and too boring for young newcomers. Just play the Lord of the Rings: Revenge of the King game on the same console. madami fun and less drivel.
Award: Endurance Test
3: Psychonauts
You know, I give Tim Schaffer a lot of shit, most of the time deservedly, but I won’t deny that the man has made some good games in his time. Stuff like araw of the Tentacle, Brutal Legend, his magnum opus being Grim Fandango, and the classic cult hit of this era and the PS2 classic that I have only played recently, Psychonauts. Psychonauts follows a camp of kids, all with psychic abilities trained sa pamamagitan ng the government to become agents that can use these powers. One such kid being Razputin, who just wants to be a Psychonaut and not part of the family circus. But when kids start getting brainwashed around the camp, Raz has to prove himself sa pamamagitan ng entering the minds of many different subjects and finding the cause of all this. Let me just say that I pag-ibig the charm this game oozes out of it. All the collectables in this game are just so creative, with different larawan in the levels all pertaining to what the character of sinabi dungeon lies, cobwebs you can collect with a special item, and the emotional baggage is just baggage that is crying until you can find their tags. That’s just clever to me. I also pag-ibig the levels in this game. Even the tutorial levels like the ones for the camp counselors are great. But it really picks up when you enter the minds of all the other characters. The levels consist of some crazy stuff, like Raz turning into a giant and destroying a city inhabited sa pamamagitan ng isda people, trying to solve a puzzle sa pamamagitan ng setting up a stage play for a cynical critic, avoiding a demonic toro through a neon Mexican styled city, and my personal favorite, the Milkman Conspiracy, a neighborhood run with agents that you gotta solve puzzles to get across to get to the end. The psychic abilities you get are also really cool. Stuff like being able to fly, roll on a ball, set enemies on fire, swap between characters, and so much more. I just wanted to get all the power ups for that alone. The game is just a really charming platformer that manages to also be incredibly stylish and funny, like an old school cartoon. I will say that some of the character designs sicken me, especially with their skin mga kulay being of purple and blue. They look like Doug characters on crack. Also the final level, The Meat Circus. I heard rumors about that level and I can confirm that level is hot garbage. Super precise platforming, annoying escort missions, and the fact that it’s rumored that they changed the level because it was impossible for play testers is… something else, let me tell you. But those are just smaller problems to what I consider an almost perfect game. And you better believe I’m excited for Psychonauts 2 coming out soon. Please don’t screw this one up, Tim
Award: Hidden Gem
4: The Simpsons: Hit and Run
Here it is, the big one, baby. If there was any game anyone would recognize on this, it was The Simpsons: Hit and Run. A classic from the sixth generation of consoles, being loved sa pamamagitan ng everyone who played it in their childhood. Even so good as to wish for a sequel or a remaster, much like how Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom is getting a remaster. So this is the part where I sing this game's praises, right…. Yeah right! I don’t mean to sound like a pessimistic asshole, but I got problems with this game. Simpsons: Hit and Run is not a perfect game. Hell, I would say that the hype for it is overblown. Does that mean this game isn't’ fun? Absolutely not, I had fun playing this game in it’s moments. It offers a lot for players, especially if they’re Simpsons fans. Driving around at insanely fast speed around Springfield causing destruction, smashing into stuff and people and zooming around cars is a lot of fun, especially with all the stuff you can get, made madami so from the tons of Simpsons references in this game from a ipakita just full of good moments. The variety of cars you can get does add to stuff and almost makes up for the lack of variety in the actual campaign. Yeah, the missions in this game, while fun, are lacking. I can see the GTA comparisons now, because these missions are just as fresh as GTA missions. You got mostly four missions, collect a certain number of items, race someone to a certain spot, chase someone to a certain area, or destroy a certain car. Occasionally you’ll get new stuff like platforming on foot, but it boils down to the same stuff. Destroy this thing, race this guy, chase this car, or collect these things. It all comes down to that. It eventually got tiresome, and even downright frustrating in the final level, where the tiniest screwup could send you all the way back and you already got little time as is. You cannot fuck around too much if you want to beat this level, and you get no room for mistakes. You’ll be so tempted to press the Skip prompt after a while, but no go on the final level, the one that will really test your patience. It will put your driving skills of Simpsons: Hit and Run to the ultimate test. So, yes, Simpsons: Hit and Run is the Dark Souls of licensed games. This game isn’t terrible, despite my issues with it. I didn’t say I enjoyed the main campaign, but I did enjoy the core gameplay around it. I just wished the missions were madami varied and interesting. It’s a decent game, but holy hell, it does not hold up as this flawless classic that people say that it is.
Award: Tough Love
5: Under the Skin
And here we come to our final game of the session, a game created sa pamamagitan ng Capcom. Looking at it now, Capcom made a lot of strange stuff during the sixth generation of consoles, some connected to the classic Capcom Five, that failed event for the Gamecube. I had this game beat and wrote out months ago, but never got around to it because Nitro Rad made an April Fools video about it already before I could, you son of a B! But, whatever, I still have my own thoughts on the game that could be of some use, plus the madami people talk about this game and spread it around, the better. Because I got problems with this game as well, so my review is different now. First off, let me say that I pag-ibig the concept of this game. You have to battle with fellow aliens in order to perform pranks on humans of different varieties. You gotta know when to get the most people in your prank radius, when to swap out the right item and when you balabal yourself as a human depending on what their items are. Some items will be better than others. It’s something that can get really addictive and be tons of fun to keep trying out different stuff while avoiding the rival alien, as well as stage hazards. But that said, my one issue is how long levels can go on for. They do have some varieties to them, like both you and the rival work together to stop enemies in the level or you have to hold onto an item longer. But most of them involve keeping the most coins before the end of the level. But the levels can go on for ten minutes. I get that the game is short and doing any less time would make it much shorter than the game already is, but man can it go on for a bit. And with how aggressive the A.I. can be, it can knock all the coins out of you, take it and win at the last second, making you start over from the beginning of the ten minutes. And with the final boss with the A.I. at the height of aggressiveness, mixed with the stage hazards being super brutal, it will take a lot of trial and error to beat. That said, the strategy and the variety of the levels and items to use keep the game fresh and fun, especially if you can get some mga kaibigan together to play the game. It’s a stylish Capcom classic. Put Cosmi in the susunod Marvel Vs. Capcom and put him in Evo tournaments.
Award: Dumb Fun
Art by Alinah_09
Two of the most well known horror writers ever, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, have created some of the most twisted and most macabre horror stories that we all know and pag-ibig like Call of Cthulhu, The Black Cat, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Tell-Tale Heart, Mountains of Madness, and the Fall of the House of Usher. They both have made very influential work, yet what makes them so interesting is how different they are. So, what is it about these two that make them so different. Well, that’s what I wish to talk about with you today.
We’ll start with Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a writer...
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We’ll start with Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was a writer...
