Retro|Spective 199: The Final Tour of PlayStation 2

[Asura]

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.

Yep; doubly irritating if the game never actually gets released, or you make parts of it that don't get released. Sometimes the publisher can repurpose the stuff, but sometimes it just gets discarded.

[Neon Ignition]

Driving Emotion Type-S
Square's foray into the crowded sim racer market with their typical odd choice in title. This racer aimed to have handling based on the vehicles weight. The game featured 14 courses and 43 licensed cars marking it as one of the smaller games in the genre.




Dropship: United Peace Front
A combat flight simulator title, Dropship tasked the player with controlling futuristic military vehicles in a range of missions and was critically well received.




Echo Night: Beyond
Another of the many titles developed by FROMSoftware, the game is the third in its series but stands alone story wise from the past entries. Telling a ghost story about a new bride in a game played from a first person perspective. The game features no combat and when players see a spirit they must run before their heart rate rises too much and they die from a heart attack.




Did you ever play any of this PS2 only titles?

[nakamura]

I love Driving Emotion. It's not a good game but for the time it has the best in car sensation of any racing game. Even with windscreen reflections!

[Neon Ignition]

Time for another wave of PS2 nuggets:


Eternal Ring
Clearly the kings of these types of threads, yet another game made by FROM Software, this time a first person RPG launch title for the system. Mixed reviews hit this title keeping it as a one off from the studio.





Extermination
Hyped in the build up to its release, the game was one of the first survival horrors released on the console but when it finally made market it was met with reviews deeming it to just be average. The emphasis is placed on running when you can as ammo is limited.





Firefighter F.D.18
Split over several stages, players take on the role of a firefighter in a Backdraft inspired game where you use your axe and extinguisher to battle blazes in timed stages.




Are these explored or unexplored titles for you?

[chopemon]

Got Eternal Ring on the backlog. Looking forward to it.

Played a decent chunk of Extermination but it suffers from making forward progress but then you get infected and have to run back to a safe point to get healed. That happened to me and then upon getting back to where I had run from, I entered the next door and the camera combined with character inertia caused me to walk off a ledge and die reloading a save a decent while back. So it got turned off.

Firefighter F.D.18 is fine but it sure ain't Sakurazaka Shouboutai, a far better and more interesting fire fighting game on the PS2 made by the secret best PS2 game developer, Irem.

[Neon Ignition]

Tuesdays line up:


Frequency
The first big release from Harmonix, the game was the one that first drew attention to the developer and it received a warm critical response. Though a sequel in effect was later made, this entry didn't perform well at retail.




Galerians: Ash
A sequel to a PS1 game, this is a psychic action title developed by Sammy Studios. The game takes place six years after the events of the prior game.





Ghosthunter
One of Sony's PS2 era third person action games that act as a test bed for the success they'd later find with their PS3 generation onward releases, this game followed a Detroit cop who releases a horde of ghosts who kidnap his partner and take her to a ghost dimension that you have to head into to rescue her.




Glass Rose
A point and click adventure game made by Capcom and Cing. It takes place in 1929, in a remote Japanese mansion with much of the gameplay involving talking to the residents. The game fell foul in reviews with the genre having fallen out of favour.





Did any of these titles catch your interest?

[Asura]

Extermination
Hyped in the build up to its release, the game was one of the first survival horrors released on the console but when it finally made market it was met with reviews deeming it to just be average. The emphasis is placed on running when you can as ammo is limited.

I feel as though this was not well-named.

[chopemon]

Really want to play Glass Rose.

[QualityChimp]

Love how rando these choices are.
I've not heard of, let alone played most of these!

I seem to remember that Frequency has Weezer on the soundtrack?

[wakka]

Neon Ignition is a master of digging out these ultra obscure 2000s exclusives.

I remember the first two of these but didn't play either. Ghosthunter rings a very vague bell but I've never heard of Glass Rose whatsoever. Sounds interesting though.

[fuse]

I'm sorry what? I'd never heard of Glass Rose - but a Capcom / Cing point and click? Released only in Japan and PAL territories, you say? Not even joking when I say I have just bought a copy before I came back to finish typing this post.

[wakka]

That's what we like to see. Let us know how you get on with it man.

I'm thinking I need a PS2 session soon. Might sort out copies of this and Critical Velocity.

[CMcK]

I really enjoyed Frequency. It's probably the reason I learned to get on with the poor PlayStation controllers of yesteryear.

[nakamura]

Ghosthunter is a good, not great but good game. The graphics are bloody amazing too and with a full 480p output.

[Neon Ignition]

The PS2's library was so vast that it's just knew deep in curios. It's a shame that modern budgets have gutted the AA and A markets for games, you got a ton of rubbish but there was fun in sifting for these odd one outs.