Retro|Spective 199: The Final Tour of PlayStation 2

[wakka]

I liked Incredible Crisis! That was a cool game, although the bemani minigame drove me nuts. Really tricky.

[Neon Ignition]

One last week of updates before we break off till the new year:


Clock Tower 3
The fourth game in the series despite its title see's the player control 14yr old Alyssa and shifts the gameplay away from point and click and instead into tapping into Capcom's success with their RE format. The difference is that Alyssa carries no weapons and must use holy water to stun enemies till she can find an object of sentimental value to reunite the spirits with. The game hugely underperformed and so was never ported, it also brought the franchise to an end but remains an interesting entry of the genre for that generation




Cold Winter
Developed by Swordfish Studio, this FPS had its Xbox version cancelled leaving the PS2 release as the only one ever issued. The games main selling point was a storyline penned by Warren Ellis, this proved to be its most liked aspect as well. Whilst the game sported a physics engine that allowed players to interact with their environment to do things like flipping tables to create makeshift cover, the core FPS action was deemed in reviews to not stand out enough and so the game failed to make much of a market impact.




Cool Boarders: Code Alien
By the time the sixth entry in the series had come around, the genre was widely covered and had seen the impact of SSX on it. This final entry in the series arrived as a PS2 exclusive but was a largely straight forward addition to the franchise, its recognisable brand name failing to carry it any further.




Do you have history with any of these three games and were they unfairly ignored?

[chopemon]

I have tried Clock Tower 3 multiple times but can't get through it. Running away but you've got a fear meter that determines if your character can be controlled normally is something that always sounds better in a design doc than it actually is. Some cool ideas but I think that kind of mechanic is better in a game where you have more abilities to protect yourself.

Nothing else to say on the others except that I worked for the Cold Winter studio doing 50 Cent BOTS for a while.

[Neon Ignition]

Cowboy Bebop: Tsuioku no Serenade
Based on the anime and made by Bandai, this walk along beat em up was only released in Japan and allows the player to select one of three characters.




Crimson Tears
Continuing the genre but this time from Capcom and Spike. Somewhat sc-fi themed you again have three players to choose from who are humanoid looking weapons in procedurally generated levels.




Cy Girls
Puzzle solving gameplay mixed with two combat styles in this two disc title where the player you chose determined the gameplay style.




Did you ever try any of these PS2 only games out?

[charlesr]

Code Alien must be one of the only snowboard games I've not tried.

[QualityChimp]

Where are you finding all these random games from?

[Neon Ignition]

PS2 is the system that never stopped giving!


Dark Cloud / Dark Chronicle
The action RPG duo that included city building elements in its gameplay. The original had a muted response on release but slowly built up enough sales behind it that the studio chanced a sequel that expanded on the concept and changed the art style to have some cel-shaded aesthetics to it. The sequel was better received and sold well but the studio has never come around to making a third game.




Destruction Derby Arenas
One of the launching franchises of the PS1's original launch had drifted from audience attention over the course of that systems life and so when time came to attempt a PS2 entry this passed by largely unnoticed. Other than a step up in technology the action itself was pretty much the same as before.




Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
It might have taken three generations for fans to get a partial remake but that doesn't mean Square couldn't milk those FFVII teats. One of those results is this entry for PS2 that took the form of an action RPG third person shooter. This took the game outside of the comfort zone of the developers resulting in gameplay that had its share of niggles, those leading to a mixed response.





Did any of these prove enjoyable or were they really a dirge?

[wakka]

I eagerly anticipated Dark Cloud on the PS2, although I don't think I got that far with it in the end. The ability to work on building the town then with a push of a button swoop down to explore it with no loading times felt amazing at the time, but the dungeon-exploring aspect of the game was sadly dull.

[nakamura]

PS2 is just crazy. More good games than most systems have games and more interesting games than anything!

[nakamura]

Also the video output is fine. Generally is uses interlaced field rendering which gives access to higher frame rates due to only rendering every other frame and interlacing them. Or something.

Games early on like Ridge and TTT didn't alternate the fields correctly and looked more jagged. TTT was altered for the US release which gives the impression of anti aliasing.

Dreamcast renders often a full frame but nothing much comes close to GT3 at 60fps as a result. Colour is also not a big deal either. When you look at the skyboxes in Ridge V or the incredible colour in GT3, you see PS2 has a fine video output.

Also, check out Outrun 2006 via component. Absolutely astonishing graphics from the system.

[Asura]

I eagerly anticipated Dark Cloud on the PS2, although I don't think I got that far with it in the end. The ability to work on building the town then with a push of a button swoop down to explore it with no loading times felt amazing at the time, but the dungeon-exploring aspect of the game was sadly dull.

The sequel starts with multiple hours of walking through tile-map sewers, killing rats with a spanner.

Maybe it gets good. I don't know. But I dropped it before it opened up. Life's too short.

Glad that "kill rats in the sewer" has become an oft-made-fun-of RPG trope now. It was **** back then, we all hated it, great to have moved on.

[Neon Ignition]

The penultimate update for this year before we break off till next year in our journey through PS2 landlocked curios:

Dog's Life

An action adventure title in which you take on the role of one of fifteen types of dog, using their senses to tackle puzzles and challenges. The game was marked out for its unique nature but was also seen to be too simple for experienced gamers




Downhill Domination
The game was very much as you'd expect it to be with all the usual modes and some basic combat built into its system to fend off other racers. It also attracted decent reviews but failed to get much attention on release.




Drakan: The Ancients Gates
The PS2 only sequel to a 1999 PC game, it's a third person action title with players traversing both on land and in the air.





Did you enjoy any of these?

[Asura]

Drakan: The Ancients Gates
The PS2 only sequel to a 1999 PC game, it's a third person action title with players traversing both on land and in the air.

Did you enjoy any of these?

This one was weird - IIRC it had a massive warning on the cover about something.

Wonder if it was good. I remember the original on PC; it was part of the wave of games that came after Tomb Raider starring a rough-and-tumble supermodel woman doing rough-and-tumble things, like exploring tombs, riding dragons or deathtrapping dungeons. Mainly I remember how cool it was to be in an open environment, summon a dragon, get on, take off, and soar over the landscape, able to land and walk around anywhere. Seems so quaint in retrospect but that was impressive at the time.

[chopemon]

Catching up on this thread after some days away.

Want to play Cowboy Bebop. I have played Crimson Tears for a few hours and it's fine but not riveting. The interesting thing about it though is that there was legal trouble with it as it used a whole bunch of assets including animations from the studio's previous game, Appleseed. One of the frustrating things about work for hire contracts is that often the publisher owns every asset made for the game they paid the devs to make unless it was an asset made on the dev's own time and money. So if you're a dev who didn't have the time and money to create a library of assets, every game you'd make would see you remaking standard animations and things like rocks and crates over and over. They tried to get away with reuse and got caught.

[wakka]

I always wanted to play Dog’s Life, it’s an intriguing concept for a game. I’ll get around to it at some point (as usual with these threads I’m adding loads to my mental ‘to play’ lists!).