The Tony Hawk brand of video games has come to a nice balancing point between fun and skill, maximizing the aesthetics while maintaining a great experience. Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam for the Playstation 2 is no exception to this evolution, with easy to pick up controls and just plain interesting gameplay that make it another worthy namesake to the series.
The key to Downhill Jam‘s success is its simplicity; while most skateboarding games don’t require a vast amount of intellectual input, DJ takes this even further with defined downhill courses that take a lot of the A
Since my first play of Metal Slug in a 4-in-1 Neo Geo cabinet, I’ve played every game in the series I could get my hands on, so it’s no coincidence that a compilation of this magnitude would find its way into my hands. Metal Slug is the quintessential side-scrolling shooter that doesn’t involve space ships. I’d even go so far as to rank it above the Contra games in the grand scheme of things. Blasphemy, I know, but Metal Slug is just better.
To celebrate the franchise’s 10th anniversary, SNK has released Metal Slug Anthology, a collection of 7 incredible games – Metal Slug, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug X, Metal Slug 3, Metal Slug 4, Metal Slug 5, and Metal Slug 6 – on one disc.
The games that make up Metal Slug Anthology are arcade-perfect ports with simple controls and clean 2D graphics that carry over perfectly to the PS2. The concept of credits doesn’t transfer so well from arcade to console, so SNK gives gamers the option of choosing limited or unlimited continues. While I have a love for [i]Metal Slug[/i], I am not very good at it, so I always select the unlimited continue route.
As a side-scrolling shooter, Metal Slug is pretty simple conceptually: run from left to right while shooting and lobbing grenades and trying to avoid the hordes of enemies. Weapon upgrades and POWs litter the levels that often end in incredible boss fights. Occasionally you will run across squatty tanks or other vehicles, most often fully loaded armored vehicles.
Without a doubt, Metal Slug fans will need to add MSA to their collections. Other gamers looking for some good shooter action will definitely want to consider MSA as it provides one heck of a value. MSA is also available for PSP and Wii if the PS2 isn’t your platform of choice. The bottom line is that [i]Metal Slug[/i] is the best 2D shooter out there and you’d be wise to add this one to your collection, especially with a $39.99 price tag.
The Mana series is one Square Enix hasn’t revisited in a while. With the last entry coming out on the SNES, it never saw a revolution in gameplay or graphics. With Dawn of Mana, the company sought to remedy this.
They shouldn’t have bothered.
In this late-generation PS2 title, players are set onto the island of Illusia, where a young man named Keldy is inevitably responsible for saving the world from something, presumably involving the Dark World and a big tree. Oh, but this isn’t a normal kid. He has a piece of the big tree growing in his arm that conveniently forms the shape of a big sword when he needs it. And, to top it all off, he finds a little fairy named Faye that just loves saying her name, and gets her to follow around and cast spells.
The game’s levels have Keldy hitting enemies and shooting them with magical slingshot pellets. The goal is not only to kill the enemies, but to make them A
Spider-Man 2 was a great game. It looked good, it played well, and swinging around the city was a blast. The absolute minimum that Activision needed to do here was take the existing Spider-Man 2 game and add some assets to it. Maybe they lost the original game’s code because Spider-Man 3 somehow looks, sounds, and plays worse than its predecessor. It also looks, plays, and sounds worse than the 360, PS3, and Wii versions of the game, but that’s to be expected from the previous generation’s hardware. Development effort was very obviously concentrated on the 360/PS3 versions of the game, and the poor, decrepit PS2 was left out to dry.
Missions are boring and repetitive, and they often drag for far too long. Tracking lizard-men was entertaining for the first few minutes, but by the end of the mission I was rooting for them. If you’re not beating up generic lizard-men, then you’re beating up generic gang-bangers. This wouldn’t be so bad if the combat was challenging in any way, shape, or form, but you’ll find yourself bypassing as much combat as possible to get to the boss fights. Not that the boss fights are terribly difficult either, but at least they offer a change of pace. Add Spidey’s black suit to the mix and combat is an absolute cinch.
With little in-game opposition, one of your biggest foes is the camera. How is it that we’ve been making three-dimensional games for three console generations and we still can’t consistently deliver a half-decent camera? Honestly, what is so hard about A
Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 is almost the exact same game as its predecessor. Not only is this lazy, but the first game wasn’t very good. Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT suffered from ugly visuals, terrible handling, and a boring, repetitive conquest mode. Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 features all of the same problems despite coming out a year later.
The story should be avoided because it’s nonsensical and unfolds through simulated message board posts that somehow manage to make even less sense than real life message board posts. There are plenty of disappointing ways to tell a story, but it’s especially disappointing to read text messages instead of watching a cut scene. Even static character portraits with voice-acted lines would have been more engrossing.
Since this is a racing game, the story, terrible as it is, can be ignored in favor of drift racing action. Beat the available races to unlock more challenging races. Unfortunately, the racing mechanics, like the graphics and story, fall flat. In the off chance you’re able to keep up with the story, you’ll find that it’s a carbon copy of the typical racer’s story. You begin your career as an unknown. Win races to become better known. Win new races to become even better known. Eventually become the most well-known racer in the world. It’s boring and it’s been done before.
Regardless of the quality of the story or the progression mechanic, Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 will ultimately be judged on one characteristic: gameplay. Unfortunately, Tokyo Xtreme Racer DRIFT 2 disappoints in this area as well. The cars handle poorly while driving normally and absolutely horribly while drifting. For a game with the word A
