NotThePars Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 My mum bought me GTA 3 when I was 11 years old. I'd never heard of it before. Still have no idea what she was thinking. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiGi Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 2 hours ago, NotThePars said: My mum bought me GTA 3 when I was 11 years old. I'd never heard of it before. Still have no idea what she was thinking. I would've been a year younger and I got my stepdad to buy it for me. He also later got me Gran Turismo 3 and Devil May Cry 3. Truly a halcyon era of gaming. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madwullie Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 (edited) Had absolutely no problem playing all the gtas when I was a child, then when I was a teacher noising up pupils for talking about playing 18 rated games while at school. #noregrets Edited March 16, 2021 by madwullie 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 2 hours ago, madwullie said: Had absolutely no problem playing all the gtas when I was a child, then when I was a teacher noising up pupils for talking about playing 18 rated games while at school. #noregrets I told a cashier in Morrisons that she couldn't sell the last copy of MW2 to a 13-year old kid because it was an 18-game, before he ran away crying. I then unashamedly asked for that same copy. Will never forget the cold stare that the cashier gave me when she realised what I'd done. 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ludo*1 Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 My favourite GTA. I like Italian mafia style stuff so that's probably why. Scared to play it now in case it doesn't hold up. Would love a HD remake. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blootoon87 Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 I played GTA 3 for the first time since childhood during the first lockdown last year, it really hasn't aged well. Vice City on the other hand was still great fun. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Posted March 16, 2021 Share Posted March 16, 2021 Just now, Ludo*1 said: My favourite GTA. I like Italian mafia style stuff so that's probably why. Scared to play it now in case it doesn't hold up. Would love a HD remake. It hasn't, sadly. San Andreas holds up surprisingly well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miguel Sanchez Posted March 16, 2021 Author Share Posted March 16, 2021 I was putting together the next batch of games, I had to close the window, I assumed the editor would have saved the post so far like it normally does, it didn't Since I'm not redoing that entire fucking thing again right now, an update schedule instead: Two batches a day until we reach the top 42. We should be there by the end of the week. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djchapsticks Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 I remember my mate having a PS2 and buying GTA3 when it came out (which I think was surprisingly close to the start of the PS2's life) and it was a complete game changer. It has aged really poorly but what a blueprint it laid out for the genre. You knew even back then you were playing something a bit special. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madwullie Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 Just watched some of that GTA3 footage. You're not kidding when you say it has aged poorly. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaz Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, djchapsticks said: I remember my mate having a PS2 and buying GTA3 when it came out (which I think was surprisingly close to the start of the PS2's life) and it was a complete game changer. It has aged really poorly but what a blueprint it laid out for the genre. You knew even back then you were playing something a bit special. You're absolutely right. The PS2 had been out in Europe for less than a year before GTA3 came out. And I can't even remember it being massively hyped - I just saw it appear on the shelves one day and decided to buy it. At the time the map seemed huge but when you see size comparisons to modern games it was absolutely tiny! I'd argue that it's the most influential video game released of the past 20 years, if not ever. Edited March 17, 2021 by Gaz 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forameus Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 15 hours ago, NotThePars said: My mum bought me GTA 3 when I was 11 years old. I'd never heard of it before. Still have no idea what she was thinking. One year I'd asked for two games for Christmas/Birthday. One of them was a GTA title, so my dear old Da had heard all about how awful they were for someone my age. No way was I getting that. So he plumped for the second title. The Getaway. The not-at-all cartoony picture of gangster London, chock full of grit, blood and swearing. Glorious parenting. Never did me harm though. c***s. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djchapsticks Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 5 minutes ago, Gaz said: You're absolutely right. The PS2 had been out in Europe for less than a year before GTA3 came out. And I can't even remember it being massively hyped - I just saw it appear on the shelves one day and decided to buy it. At the time the map seemed huge but when you see size comparisons to modern games it was absolutely tiny! I'd argue that it's the most influential video game released of the past 20 years, if not ever. This is true as well. In 2001, Rockstar weren't the behemoth they are now. I think they were still actually DMA design at the point where this came out. GTA and GTA London were both cult hits but that's all they were, definitely niche games on the PS1. GTA2 on the other hand was a bit of a flop, only selling a third of the copies the original did, I know I personally have played at least part of every game in the main console series apart from GTA2. So the reality is that there was no hype for it because no-one was asking for GTA3. It was an absolute phenomenon when it came out. Everyone was talking about it and it caught everyone off guard. 'THAT'S Grand Theft Auto? Is that no the game you run about with the camera above you and run down Gouranga's? That looks AMAZING' 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotThePars Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 48 minutes ago, forameus said: One year I'd asked for two games for Christmas/Birthday. One of them was a GTA title, so my dear old Da had heard all about how awful they were for someone my age. No way was I getting that. So he plumped for the second title. The Getaway. The not-at-all cartoony picture of gangster London, chock full of grit, blood and swearing. Glorious parenting. Never did me harm though. c***s. God. What a horrible game. Hated every minute I played of it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stellaboz Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 GTA3 was like compared a bit more to Driver 2 I think at the time, but massively updated. And you were able to hit people. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuctifano Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 (edited) 57 minutes ago, djchapsticks said: This is true as well. In 2001, Rockstar weren't the behemoth they are now. I think they were still actually DMA design at the point where this came out. GTA and GTA London were both cult hits but that's all they were, definitely niche games on the PS1. GTA2 on the other hand was a bit of a flop, only selling a third of the copies the original did, I know I personally have played at least part of every game in the main console series apart from GTA2. So the reality is that there was no hype for it because no-one was asking for GTA3. It was an absolute phenomenon when it came out. Everyone was talking about it and it caught everyone off guard. 'THAT'S Grand Theft Auto? Is that no the game you run about with the camera above you and run down Gouranga's? That looks AMAZING' Yeah, this is it. GTA3 was the "killer app" for the PS2. I didn't vote for it as I restricted myself to one game per franchise but I can certainly accept the case it's the most important even if it's aged horribly. I actually enjoyed GTA1 & 2 for what they were, mind you. "NO DONATION, NOOO SALVATION" https://youtu.be/MpBzHyCmYEs Edited March 17, 2021 by Fuctifano 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lofarl Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 I worked in game when Gta San Andreas came out. For some reason we had to phone people to let them know that their pre ordered game was in stock and they’d be guaranteed a copy on release. The amount of people that came down days beforehand demanding a copy was staggering. I can mind some wee boy throwing a utter rage tantrum. Tears and snotters everywhere. Eventually I said I’d give him his copy if he calmed down. His wee face brightened up, no doubt thinking he’ll be able to brag to his pals about playing it first. I’ll just need to see some ID as it’s an18 rated game. The release day itself was crazy. Just GTA all day in a never ending queue of frustrated parents with kids trying to trade in everything including demo cds for a copy. I can mind some woman asking me if the game was a violent as they said in the news. Her wee kid shot me this scowling look so I decided to fabricate stuff about it lets you set fire to puppies and rape sprees. I wonder if he ever got a copy. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miguel Sanchez Posted March 17, 2021 Author Share Posted March 17, 2021 (edited) IN JOINT 96TH PLACE, WITH 6 POINTS FROM 1 VOTE Game: XIII Platform: PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube Release date: 2003 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0mZjCr0OqA Poll-maker comments: I was looking forward to the remake of this that came out last year, since I'd never played the original. What an absolute fucking stinker. The remake was so bad that sales of the original were higher in the week of its release. Game: Doom Platform: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch Release date: 2016 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZYwKpkLIXM Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQGxC8HKCD4 Game: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis Platform: PlayStation, PC, Dreamcast, GameCube Release date: 1999 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnEmuhdVPRw Game: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge Platform: PC Release date: 1991 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXRMEz6n5SM Poll-maker comments: If I grew up playing point and click adventures I would never have got into video games, and I'd probably be a millionaire. Game: Worms Armageddon Platform: PC, Dreamcast, PlayStation Release date: 1999 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6lrRqst9Z Game: Halo 3 Platform: Xbox 360 Release date: 2007 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUKdc2xiNkk Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa6WLMt-3oQ Game: System Shock 2 Platform: PC Release date: 1999 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAXafHISULA Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ScjZGArpUs Poll-maker comments: I want to play this. I like BioShock so much I would overlook the inevitable difficulties of playing a game from the 90s. Game: No Man's Sky Platform: PlayStation 4, PC Release date: 2016 Gameplay: I can't, and am not going to, give you a gameplay video for this. If you watch the two videos below you'll see why. Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf9egxQsZyY Jim Sterling (at time of release) Jimquisition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2qKAX_QaoI P&B thread on the game, in which Confidemus spends pages telling us this is going to change humanity then fucks off when it releases and is a heap of shite: https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/index.php?/topic/223512-no-mans-sky User comments: "Another perhaps controversial choice, but it's a more personal one. I remember buying right into the hype this game generated, and bought it on day 1. Unfortunately, it was nowhere near what it should be. On this very board, I put it as probably the clearest 5 out of 10 I'd seen. It wasn't bad, it did some cool things, but it was so far short of where it should have been. Then the next year, I had my first kid, and in all honesty, despite him being a wee star, both parents struggled a bit mentally. I remember once he went to bed, I sat myself in front of NMS and just calmly went through the limited gameplay loop. I need this stuff, go mine it, ok I've got that, but now I need this stuff from another planet, off I go...etc etc. It was exactly the kind of game I needed at that point, and I'll always be grateful for that. It's since gone on to be close to what was originally promised, and I've put in a lot of hours. A true success story for the developers." Poll-maker comments: "A true success story for the developers" is not the phrase I'd use, my man Game: Alien: Isolation Platform: PlayStation 3; 4, Xbox 360; One, PC Release date: 7th October 2014 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pvaw3tqgaw Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZssC5Iw4XrA Poll-maker backlog status: It's on there. Bought it on sale on a whim. I've never really liked any Alien film I've seen but people whose opinions I trust like this, so I should enjoy it. Game: Sid Meier's SimGolf Platform: PC Release date: 2002 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfnxx8w4XSQ Game: FIFA 99 Platform: PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PC Release date: 1998 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn_adOPvu8U (This is an Old Firm match - marvel at some of the utter shite on the pitch, and the now dead football club featured) Game: Championship Manager Platform: PC, Amiga, Atari ST Release date: 1992 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VneBdWhS2AM Game: Super Mario Galaxy 2 Platform: Nintendo Wii Release date: 2010 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx1w3oworew Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJyyyBJoKXU Game: Call of Duty: World at War Platform: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii Release date: 2008 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzDUI8wN9Qw Gary Oldman was in this: You forgot that, didn't you? Poll-maker comments: I didn't like this. Although it did spawn Zombies, so it wasn't all bad. I also reviewed this when I went back and finished it in 2016 (I don't like what I'm reading but here you go anyway: Spoiler In a previous life I attempted to review things. Albums mostly, but video games too when the occasion permitted. I was not generous of COD5. I seem to have put approximately 60 hours into the online - not counting Nazi Zombies, which I'll come to later. It was dreadful. I hated it. I hated the maps, I hated the guns, everything. After playing COD4 it was incomparable. Intolerable. Intolerable is the word I use to describe my thoughts on it when I finally gave up and traded it in in a fit of rage and disgust also. Dreadful stuff. Trying to be clever when you're seventeen, nah. Nasty stuff. But now I've finished it on Veteran seven years later purely to get some trophies I have a whole new layer of scorn to pour on it. So, what have we now? We have what's really the last major game release set in World War Two. Somewhat new of its time as rather than just killing an endless (and it literally is endless) supply of Nazis you took part in American missions in the Pacific, allowing you to kill an endless supply of Japanese. And hey, it is endless. This game is so old that it contains that previous Call of Duty staple, infinitely respawning enemies. That only stop respawning once you've managed to lunge forward far enough amidst the unseen shots from every direction and the grenade spam. I've only ever finished Modern Warfare 2 and 3 on this difficulty level in Call of Duty and this is far beyond both of them. Enemies can shoot you unseen. The sheer amount of them means that luck plays far too big a part in actually getting anywhere. If you have to get into a building and there's four or five people shooting at you from the windows you can take them all out and quickly move up. This stops them spawning. If you take them all out and wait while there's people firing at you from another location, they'll respawn and you'll be stuck. And there's sections in levels where the spawn points can't be reached because of the amount of enemies coming out of them. This is bad game design. You can say that the infinitely spawning thing is a feature, that's fine, but there's areas which transcend the concept of cheapness and just leave you in disgust. About the only positive you can offer the game here is that it's quite generous with checkpoints. You don't have to go very far in between them, mostly. Special mention has to go to those grenades. Endless. If you're in cover and waiting to shoot those enemies who're pinging whatever you're hiding behind you'll soon have several grenade indicators appearing, penning you in. When they land next to you and you can throw them back, fine. But when you can't and you need to move from cover to cover you're exposed to all those shots from all those directions. Infuriating. One slight respite exists here in the form of your fellow soldiers. Utterly useless in the sense that they don't shoot anyone and only move up after you've done all the work, they do throw a lot of grenades back. I'm almost thankful for them at that point. Most of the time though you'll find yourself crouching behind cover - that you had to run up and secure - only to find that some useless ***** has come up and occupied the exact same bit of space, forcing you into the open. Or, even better, preventing you from moving at all. At least if it's not one of the people who's named you can knife and kill them with no ill-effect. Special mention here has to go to the Kiefer Sutherland-voiced Sergeant Roebuck who I was quite glad to see killed. Utterly useless. Again, not a feature of difficulty, a downside of bad design. Still harping on at the bad design angle, look at the picture. Japan in the searing heat, the Pacific island nation sees a surround of... brown. And grey. The assorted fields of Germany and eventual interiors of Berlin you fight in? The aftermath of Stalingrad? Grey. Lots of grey. Lots of brown. Lots of absolutely identical scenery and colours. This coupled with the pretty universal story inspiration of World War Two makes this game a quite repetitive experience with very little room for surprised or anything in the story. There is some inclusion of things like historical footage and an attempt to depict the human side of the war. You're not controlling a trained SAS or Navy Seal here, but the whole thing falls quite flat with everything else that's contributing to it. Couple that with the infuriating nature of the Veteran gameplay and it's not a good experience. About the only instance of variety is a level where you're the gunner on a sea plane who has to take down an assortment of boats and fighter planes, that's different and interesting. But of course it happens at night so everything is pretty much dark grey, save for the orange lifejackets the stranded sailors you save are wearing. I haven't played it with friends this time around but Nazi Zombies was fun on another level. Even for the relatively short amount of time I played it, being mic'd up with three mates hoping desperately to get the Ray Gun out of the mystery box, trying to beat our record... the memories all came flooding back when I was playing. That I'm thankful for with this game, but everything else... appalling. Even more so that I played it so many years later purely for trophies. I need help. Game: Crash Team Racing Platform: PlayStation Release date: 1999 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTLREpMM9tE Poll-maker comments: Is this just something that everyone has played, regardless of how old you are, or whether or not you like video games? Probably. Here is a review I wrote of it in 2017: Spoiler After the first three Crash Bandicoot games came Crash Team Racing, where Sony and Naughty Dog presumably saw value in Nintendo's foremost mascot deciding that after killing his biggest enemy so many times they could go go-karting at the weekend together as a more civil way of settling their disagreements. Not possessing the same sort of shamelessness that sees Nintendo release as many Mario games as they do there is some semblance of a plot in CTR: There's an alien trying to take over the earth and only the best of this ragtag bunch of anthropomorphised animals from Australia can stop him. To do this there's an assortment of tracks with power-ups to decide who's best. It's pretty much all good. The designs of each track, in terms of the backgrounds and the circuit layouts themselves, are varied, challenging and distinctive. Crash games have always had great design and great colours and stuff and that's the case here. Each track would feel different if they all looked the same, so factor in the challenges of the circuit with the distinctive setting and you get a real sense of depth and creativity. The classic art design extends to the mixture of weapons, ranging from standard guided/non-guided projectiles to Crash elements like TNT boxes. These are all balanced quite nicely in terms of keeping races competitive. I think there's a balance between the weapons doing this and whatever standard rubber banding the game features, at least a balance which is handled so well you never really notice it. Not even when you've been hit with three missiles and a Nitro crate and fell off the road and caught back up to the leader within half a lap. It's been a long time since I've played this game with someone else but the CPU is generally enough of a challenge. As there's actual progression through the single player ('Adventure' as it's called, if I remember) by the time you reach the end and have tournaments rather than single races the difficulty gets raised and it actually feels legitimate rather than cheap. Adventure has standard races you have to win but then adds a classic Crash feature in time trial races with relics and boxes for you to hit to slow down time. There's also the CTR races where you have to pick up the letters dotted around the track in a sort of Tony Hawk S-K-A-T-E homage, and although each of these features are quite easy the different goal in each of them adds yet more gameplay to an already extensive-feeling array of tracks. There are five different 'worlds' in total and each has an extra level where you have to collect crystals in an open area rather than a circuit. I think I can recall playing these levels against someone, I know I can remember the Super Mario Equivalent. Sadly for single player there's little added by these, but it's nice to have something a bit different. The actual gameplay is just what you want from an arcade karting game like this. Even after all the years I've had this and the amount of times I've played it there's always that momentary lapse of about ten seconds when I'm remembering what all the buttons do, then I press jump as I'm going round a corner and start boosting, then it's the most natural thing in the world. Being able to combine the actual fluid driving like this with the unpredictable elements of the combat is a good challenge too, particularly if you're power sliding round a corner and having to dodge a hazard, or hit a turbo pad or weapons box. Again, it's nice too that by the end of the game there is an actual legitimate challenge when you're in the Cup races or up against bosses where there's a need to have perfected this sort of driving style. The game can be casual and is for the most part, but there are advanced techniques it ultimately pays to master. And on that note, not to brag, but in my rematch with Nitrous Oxide (what a name for a racing obsessed alien) at the end to finish the game I hammered him. Three lap race, I got in front towards the end of the first and ended up miles ahead of him. Every weapon I threw behind me he hit. Very satisfying. At the end when the credits come up you get some classic wacky back story to all the characters, making this one of the few games where I've ever let the credits run through in their entirety. The irony being I didn't look at any of it. Since the game's 18 years old I suppose there's nothing left for me to say of it except that it is just as good as you remember. Game: Rayman 2: The Great Escape Platform: PlayStation, PC, Dreamcast, GameCube Release date: 1999 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7QM7tet2Vs Poll-maker comments: I voted for this. I love this game. It was the first "proper" game I can remember playing, and every aspect of it feels momentous to me now as a result - the music, the sounds, the aesthetic, the dialogue, all brilliant. I'd love to see a remade version of this but it's made by a man and a company that are complete no' righters, so that probably won't happen. Here is a review I wrote of it when I last played it in 2017: Spoiler When I finished this last night I searched on here to see if I'd posted about it the last time I beat it, which must have been three years ago now. That time, much like this one, I beat the whole game and collected all the lums in about six hours. I still have my original physical copy of this. The instruction book has long fallen apart because of me nervously chewing it as me and my friend would take turns trying to beat it. I still remember how long and arduous certain sections of it felt. The Cave of Bad Dreams, for instance, a platforming section I still have trouble with playing now. There are later levels which are even harder, in part because of technical limitations I'll come to later. The underlying sense I have of this game, even after beating it completely in six hours, is still one of scale. Of it being a large, varied unique world centred around a hero's noble and successful quest. I like that it persists as such. You are Rayman, the pictured hero who has hands and feet and a head and no neck, arms or legs. While the original Rayman was a 2D sidescroller with an incomparable colour palette and the most drug-addled soundtrack imaginable, its sequel takes a cue from Mario 64 and opens up levels with collectables and enemies, but still with a focus on the platforming of the original. An army of mechanical pirates have destroyed the heart of the world and started taking prisoners, and it's up to you to save everyone. Again, all very nice, and you can see why to a ten year old it feels like such an undertaking. The gameplay is much more immersive than the original Rayman, and not just because you can move in more directions than left and right. Right away you can use Rayman's hair to hover in mid-air and shoot at enemies and relevant environmental objects. The controls still feel sharp even though I'm playing this on the PS1 version downloaded from the PS Store. The age of the game does show at times however. You use L1/R1 to rotate the camera. Moving the right stick fires shots from Rayman's fist. Since it's a short game, by the time you get to the end you'll still be trying to move the camera (which it should be said barely ever moves at all - more often than not you'll get a thing in the top left corner saying you can't rotate it) and being mildly annoyed by this inconvenience while you're trying to kill an enemy. I'm sure I can't fault a game for existing at a certain point in the history of games and having resultant quirks which are strange to me 18 years after release, but it's not something that goes away. It also can't be overstated how bad the actual camera control is. There are frequent sections where you'll be climbing along walls, jumping from section to section and being unable to see properly where you should be going. It all feels so... unnatural. There's a few sections too where you have to carry an object from one place to another, throwing it on to ledges along the way. You can imagine what trying to see where to go with them is like. As far as combat and enemies go there's not really much to say. You get an assortment of robot enemies which are all pretty much the same. You shoot them, you wait for their invulnerability to go away while dodging any of their attacks, you shoot again. Repeat. Some of them move around in different ways but aside from the Ninja robot who teleports right next to you who you have to jump away from there's very little variety in the combat. Even the, uh, organic enemies amount to much of the same. You can press R2 to target an enemy and make dodging attacks easier, but when you're up against more than one it's a disaster. In fact scratch that, it's a disaster normally. There seems to be a real lag in the controls at times for enemies that move around. When you're targeting you never quite manage to aim at them properly or shoot when you want to. The bulk of the gameplay, which I'm happy to say is realised much more fully and much more competently, is in the platforming. Whether it's your standard jumping from platform to platform, climbing sections, taming explosive shells on legs to ride them through obstacle courses or flying through tunnels of lava, it's pretty much all the right balance between challenging and satisfying. I'm a large fan of gameplay which can best be described as satisfying, the sort of thing where you can get into a rhythm when moving around or doing what you're doing, even when the difficulty ramps up. There are times when the camera can be an issue and there's one section in particular towards the end when you're flying on a shell and the controls/camera combine to make the blind path you're supposed to take an act of sheer luck and nothing else, but given the time it was released it's still a good game, which brings me on to my next point which I said I'd touch on earlier. With Rayman 3 after this and certainly in the Origins/Legends from last gen, and the original, Rayman is known for having a game world which is extremely vivid and stylised. Lots of colours, lots of elements, lots of distinctive different areas. If I ever manage to finish everything in Rayman 3 HD I'm sure I'll mention it. In 2 though, it's very dull. There's a lot of green. There's a lot of basic areas with very little in them - the first boss fight is effectively a big blue slide which may as well be in space, because it's just black along the sides, making it feel like you're completely disconnected from the rest of the world (and certainly from the level which preceded it, which is underwater and very distinctive in itself). Being released in 1999, and coming after the original sequel which was a 2D game like the first game was scrapped, you get the distinct sense that this is a game constantly at the limits of what was technologically capable at the time. I think it's why I'm able to write off its faults so easily, at least the ones which can be attributed to the time it was made. The reason I bought this from the PS Store (P.S. it's a crime the PS1 and PS2 classics are no longer a thing) was actually because of a problem with my disc version. The sound was screwed up and hey, here's something that's legitimately one of the best games ever for 3.99. Bargain. But besides that, in terms of the levels and just the way some of the elements in them are made and put together and the graphical flaws you see in them, I don't feel as if it's because the game is badly made because the gameplay confirms it isn't. For that reason, as I still play old games on occasion, I like seeing the flaws. I like the cutscenes where there's voices without any character moving or giving the impression that the voice is coming from them. It gives me a sense that gaming develops because games like this exist to push the medium. At least it got polished up for the PS2 when it was re-released. So, everything about it is good and everything that's bad about it is good because it's bad. I'm sad games from history like this are pushed out and go unplayed because of the nature of video games and the focus on money and progress. The gameplay holds up, the characters are developed and interesting, even though the game is short and feels oddly constricted (certainly as far as levels go the end seems to come a lot quicker than you think) there's still a tremendous sense of scale. I'm especially glad Rayman 2 is like this, because when you beat the final boss you get to play some of the originally planned sequel, and it's even more ******** than the original. Maybe one day I'll beat that. Game: BioShock Infinite Platform: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,PC Release date: 26th March 2013 Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAGQfJkyC3Q Zero Punctuation review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rciyCHa6J4o Poll-maker comments: I didn't vote for this, but I respect it a lot. I recently played the PS4 version, and wrote a review of it here: https://www.pieandbovril.com/forum/index.php?/topic/213585-what-was-the-last-game-you-played/&do=findComment&comment=14203454 Game's lasting cultural impact outside of video games: Edited March 18, 2021 by Miguel Sanchez 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miguel Sanchez Posted March 17, 2021 Author Share Posted March 17, 2021 Turns out that post I started yesterday didn't disappear at all, so you'll get another two before the night is done. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stellaboz Posted March 17, 2021 Share Posted March 17, 2021 Ohhh Snake Eater! Brilliant stuff. One of the all time best opening scores for a game, absolutely phenomenal atmosphere the music gave this game from the off. The gameplay was a huge upgrade on Sons of Liberty, despite the lack of a mini map in the corner. Little funny things like killing Ocelot's nephew(?) and getting a paradox-screen was really innovative. The relationship between Big Boss and Snake was also brilliant and the final battle was a lot of fun. Also who can forget the the sniper battle with "The End"? AND the possibilities e.g. turning the clock forward on the PS2 by a few years, reloading it and he's died of old age. Absolutely fucking loved stuff like that. -1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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