__Hello.🙂 How's your year going so far? I've been keeping my head down and sticking with my daily routine of going through all my unplayed video games (sorted by year) and, in the evening, watching a few episodes of TV shows I'm crossing off my watchlist. Welcome to my latest batch of brief Twitter-length reviews of what I've played/seen for the first time over the past month. (TV shows are exempt because I'm not quite sure how to review them.)
__Before we get into today's list of video games, let's start off with a movie. Among the shows I watched recently was Animaniacs, which did have a direct-to-video movie spin-off called Wakko's Wish. I remember seeing ads for it on Cartoon Network when I was young, but never saw the film itself until now.
It's kind of an animated version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, with the whole cast racing to the wishing star. It feels a tad unfocused juggling all the characters, but I like how they're a chorus on almost every song.
My rating: 75%.
__I also watched the Flash Gordon serials for my latest evening viewing. Now, I group my DVDs by category – movies, TV shows and miscellaneous – but I wasn't sure where to place those serials. They are episodic, and I guess they were sort of the TV shows of their day, but IMDb and all other sources categorise them as movies. I've now decided to swap them from TV shows to miscellaneous. In the meantime, if you're curious, here's my brief thoughts on them:
__The original Flash Gordon: Space Soldiers (AKA just Flash Gordon), I'm sorry to say, just doesn't hold up that well. It's very repetitive (for example, Zarkov is rescued from Ming's laboratory only to end up in another enemy's almost immediately), and the fact that it's from the 30s doesn't make the acting any more bearable. It's kind of amusing how everything works by "rays", and there are a few scenes that you can tell inspired Star Wars.
__Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars is my favourite of the three. It's the most competently made, and the conflict between Azura and the Clay People is interesting enough. It even has some nice callbacks to the first serial, like a reversal of the amnesia episode. The only thing I really can't stand is Happy.
__Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe is by far the weakest of the bunch. Its title crawl for each episode was the most direct inspiration for Star Wars, but the story is just straight-up boring. It doesn't help that many returning characters have been recast, and especially that the film print didn't seem to have preserved very well. The first serial had some lapses in quality, but here the audio is so bad it's virtually unwatchable.
__Now let's move on to video games.
__I was going through the games on my "owned" list from 2003 this time, but I made a short list of ones to catch up on before I move on to 2004. For example, I recently bought Devil May Cry HD Collection on PS3, which includes the first three games in the series; since the first two predate 2004, that meant a couple of blank ratings on my list to fill in. I also decided to continue working my way through the Sonic and Castlevania series while I was on it.
__This first section is a few games I decided not to download after previewing them in the form of longplays. At least, not yet. In the case of Castlevania Chronicles (which is a PS1 port of PC game released only in Japan in 1993), I'm reserving judgement until I get to Lament of Innocence, since I'll have to buy both in bulk on the PS3 store. The same goes for Sonic Advance: I haven't got to the sequels yet, so I may or may not download ROMs of the whole trilogy.
The camera and character movements are awkward, the text is often bizarrely misaligned, and the overall atmosphere is pretty uninspiring. Still, the core game has its moments, most notably the undead bull boss fight.
My rating: 45%.
The levels are so much bigger this time, and it takes so much longer to find everything, that it starts to become a drag. There are too many new moves to count, including Banjo and Kazooie being able to separate and do their own things.
My rating: 60%.
At first, I thought it would just be the first game with a new coat of paint, but it mostly does its own thing between the first level and the end. I like the mirror doppelganger boss fight, but not Simon's redesign in Arrange Mode.
My rating: 70%.
It's as formulaic as it gets, and I'm not a big fan of the music (aside from some familiar tracks), so it's not one of my favourite Sonic games overall, but I still prefer it to the 3D games. Design-wise, it seems most inspired by Sonic 3.
My rating: 70%.
__If you're unfamiliar with Legacy of Darkness, I said "the core game" because it's an expanded version of the series' first 3D entry, which was also on the N64 and simply titled Castlevania.
__I decided to preview Banjo-Tooie via longplay before deciding whether or not to download it because, as much as I loved the first game, I haven't forgotten my intense hatred for the N64 controller.
__And now for the ones on my "owned" list that I haven't played, so their ratings have been blank until now.
__Among them is Rayman 3 HD, with which I decided to cheat a little and include in the year the original Rayman 3 was released, since the HD remaster came out after the next instalment in the series. And to be fair, it's not the first time I've used the remaster as a substitute for the original.
__Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell is the last 2003 game on the list, after which the catch-up set begins. Sonic Adventure 2 is among the latter group. As well as Sonic Adventure DX on the GameCube, I decided to get the PS3 ports of both Adventure games just to have those titles on my list, which meant a couple more blank ratings to fill in. The first game was originally released on the Dreamcast in 1998, but the DX version didn't hit the GameCube until 2003. By then, Sonic Adventure 2 was already out – on both consoles!
It's still driven by corporate mumbo jumbo that I don't care about, not helped by the fact that all the factions that you have to choose between are detestable in their own ways. There are four possible endings, and they all suck.
My rating: 45%.
It's much darker than the first game, but in a rather immature way, with Jak almost always angry (although that is understandable at first) and even using a gun. It's still a fun game with a terrific ending, but I truly hate Torn's voice.
My rating: 65%.
Much better than the first game, but still not what I'd consider good. It's so sombre that the predictable moments stand out all the more. Hilariously, Max's narration tries to make Wile E. Coyote gritty at one point!
My rating: 50%.
Neither the characters nor the gameplay translate well to 3D. The latter jumps from side-scrolling to an end-on view sometimes within the same stage. The voice acting is awful, and it gets extremely annoying hearing the same lines repeatedly.
My rating: 40%.
A highly enjoyable 3D platformer. It's such a thrill to find the route through each room by swinging, jumping between walls and poles, shimmying or running along walls, and pulling switches with help from your partner.
My rating: 80%.
I hated Murfy immediately for his condescending fourth wall breaks over imperfect play. The rest is utter insanity in which something potent must have been involved! The first two games flowed coherently, but this one is just pure nonsense.
My rating: 45%.
The graphics and atmosphere are the best yet, and the story is perhaps the easiest to follow. But at first, Heather barely seems fazed by the supposedly nightmarish situation, so I think it becomes more lucid after she gets to Silent Hill.
My rating: 70%.
Some characters' campaigns are more interesting than others, but they all contribute to the whole story. The camera and controls are often clunky, as if they can't keep up with the characters' speed in full 3D.
My rating: 60%.
The main story beats are good, and it's everything you could ask for in a Star Wars RPG. But I'm not that interested in the expanded universe, so the constant, often slow-moving dialogue started to get tiresome.
My rating: 70%.
True, the partner AI is atrocious, but this remake updates the graphics and gameplay to resemble the later Mana games, meaning the combat is vastly improved, and the music (including some enhanced cues from the original) is outstanding.
My rating: 85%.
I never got into the story that much, and I can't help but feel that Michael Ironside is miscast, but the stealth mechanics are among the best I've played yet. I especially like the meter that indicates how visible you are.
My rating: 80%.
It uses the Symphony of the Night gameplay template, but gives the character a whip, whose spin attack can also act as a shield. It may have been removed from the series' canon, but it's a very good game in its own right.
My rating: 80%.
The story is a bit thin, but the combat is energised, and the score is often organ-driven to complement the idea of fighting demons. I like how the rocking combat music stops once the castle goes dark, implying that it just got serious.
My rating: 70%.
It exacerbates some problems the first game had, namely the awkward control and bad voice acting, especially Tails. The story is nowhere near as interesting, and the lines often bizarrely overlap, perhaps due to translation errors.
My rating: 45%.
__It's worth noting that I haven't played the original Prince of Persia or its two sequels, but since The Sands of Time is a reboot, I figured that shouldn't be required.
__In my mind, Knights of the Old Republic walked so Mass Effect could run. Also, the combat system apparently operates on D&D-style dice rolls. Well, the dice must have really hated me, because I found that most of my attacks missed, and were pathetically weak when they didn't!
__The best part of Sonic Adventure 2 is Eggman's victory shout when you finish his stages. I don't know why, but the way he says, "Yus!" makes me laugh every time.😆
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