Review: Klonoa 2 [PS2]

Okay, I just found out about this event they’re calling “Review a Great Game Day”, which is today, so I thought I’d write a quick review for today, with a game that never appears on any top PS2 games list, but is one of my all time favourite games, Klonoa 2! I never spent much […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1hd1Gjs

Rambo: The Video Game [PC] – Review

Rambo: The Video Game is an on rails shooter released on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. The game was developed by Teyon and was published by Reef Entertainment. The game was released on the 21st February 2014 here in Europe, and is due for release on the 25th March in North America, according […] ...To receive more of these posts, you should follow my new blog, over at wordpress, the link is: http://ift.tt/1k76W7W

PS2's Final Moments: FIFA 14 review

It's been two years since I've done one of these, but to be honest, since WWE All Stars, the PS2 hasn't gotten anything aside from yearly sports games, so I decided to wait until the last of them come out, and then review them, since they'll be the same anyway.

I think I can safely say the 2014 editions will be the PS2s last, considering the PS2 has stopped production in Japan, and FIFA 14 on the PS2 was only released in PAL regions.

For this review, I will be looking at FIFA 14, I'll do PES 2014 another time.

This review is coming from a guy who doesn't follow football religiously, I watch the big national matches, that's about it. I enjoy playing the FIFA and PES games every year though, especially with friends, on the newer machines. Don't b*tch at me if I don't cover everything.

My brother has FIFA 14 on PS3, so I had a few games to see what that's like, My friend has the game on PS4 as well, I've played a game or two when I was over at his house. It's amazing when you think about it, here is the brand new PS4, just came out a few months ago, getting FIFA 14, with a new engine, and cutting edge graphics (well, not really), but on the other hand, here is the PS2, a 13 year old console, getting it's version of FIFA 14.

So what's FIFA 14 on the PS2 like, well, have you played FIFA 13? No? How about FIFA 12? FIFA 11? FIFA 10? 09? You played FIFA 09? Yeah? Good, Well, it's the same as that! They've changed nothing for the past 5 years! The only thing they've changed was of course the teams and kits, and from what I hear, they didn't even do a good job of that either! At least this year, they're giving it to us straight, but dubbing the PS2, and other versions, the "Legacy Edition".

Let's start with the presentation, because that's the first thing thrown at you in any game, and all I have to say about the presentation is... What presentation? You get the EA sports logo, you choose a language, and then the title screen comes up.
For an actual match, it's the same as any football game, the commentators introduce themselves, and tells us who's playing, shows us players in the back walking out, and shows us what I assume are flashbacks, they flash into a black and white sequence where the players are celebrating, I'm not sure what that's about.

How about the graphics? In the main game, they're nothing special, the models and textures look kind of nice, but not mind blowing, it seems EA attempted to give the players a more cartoony look, like they did with the Wii FIFA games, I didn't like the style there, and I don't like it here. The framerate is smooth for the most part, although it has is share of slowdowns. I say in the main game, the quality differs in another mode, I'll get to that later.

The game of course supports Widescreen (in this day and age, it's a necessity).
It also supports 60hz, but the feature is hidden, you can get to it by holding X and Triangle at the language screen, it looks horrible, though, the text is unreadable, don't bother with 60hz! It's okay to bother with the widescreen though, it does the job.
From what I hear, it doesn't support 480p, FIFA on the PS2 never did in PAL regions, and since FIFA 14 is PAL only, no 480p for anyone!

How's the gameplay? Well, as you'd imagine, it feels outdated compared to the current/next-gen consoles, the game feels stiffer, animations seem robotic, you can't do conditioning, and sprinting sucks, as you only turn at 45 degree angles. The game also seems slightly slower on the PS2.

Of course there are no physics engines, or sliders, none of that! The PS2 probably couldn't handle the former, but I think it can do better than what we got, but on the other hand, being in the state the PS2 is in, I can't exactly imagine there being a nagging demand for a more faithful port of the game.

It isn't even as fun as the early PS2 FIFAs, I have FIFA 2003, which I played for comparison's sake, and 2003 was a lot smoother faster, and more fun than FIFA 14, my friend, who also played both games, agreed with me.

So what game modes does it have? Well, it has none of what you have in the FIFA you're familiar with, of course, it has not Ultimate Team, or any sort of online modes, it does have career mode, which has been largely untouched since whenever EA have stopped caring the PS2 so much, because the career mode, or at least the core gameplay of it, seems mostly the same as the newer versions.

For those who haven't tried it, you create a player, and you play as that player in the team of your choice. The camera is different in the mode than others (on default) in the sense that it's pointing to the goals and is with your player at all times. A cool thing about the camera, though, is that when you approach the goal with the ball, it zooms in the player, and shakes, which makes scoring the goal more intense, I love it!

How far you'll go in career, depends on how well you play, obviously, but it's not just about how many goals you score, there is a bar that you have to fill up, I'm going to call this the "trust meter", it fills up as you do good things, such as staying in your position, successful passes, intercepts, assists, and of course, scoring goals. It goes down, however, if your passes get intercepted, call for a pass at the wrong time, and for not staying in your position, The game is very strict about your position, luckily, you can just hold L2 to automatically run to your position when you don't have the ball, which is convenient.

You also get objectives to do every match, such as doing skills, scoring a certain amount of goals, etc., which further increase your chances of ranking up and then playing for national teams. The problem with this is that the objectives remain the same regardless of your position, I've had times where I've played in defence, and the game asked me to score a hat trick...

The graphics in this mode look like p*ss, the models look like they came out of an Atari Jaguar game, most of them don't even have textures, some kit have stripes, but nothing beyond that, they don't even have any faces! The framerate as well is very unstable, despite the bad visuals, it's 60 frames at peak, but slows down more often than not, it even sometimes goes down to 10 fps! Even when the game is running the full 60, the animations look very choppy, so it doesn't feel smooth.

As you play through the career, you earn points, which can be spent on buying kits, stadiums, footballs, and more celebrations, you can also buy the Classic XI and World XI teams, and a cool little feature that I'll get to later.

The career mode is actually quite good fun, even my brother enjoyed it when he had a shot of it, but because they haven't done anything to it in years, I stopped caring about it after FIFA 12...

There's also "Lounge Mode" which seems like a league which is played by two or more players, I can actually imagine this being fun, but sadly, after playing one match, nobody wanted to play the game with me again...

As for other modes, there's also a season mode, which is the same as career, only you control the whole team, a tournament mode and a practice mode.

That's really it for game modes, EA have outright lied to us about the modes in this game, the back of the game's box said the game had "Historical Challenges" and a "Be a Pro" mode, but I haven't seen either in the game, "Be a Pro" turned out to be another name for "Career Mode" that wasn't used in the game. It seems they just copied and pasted the text from another version onto the PS2 box...

How about the sound? As always, I didn't like EAs choice of music for the soundtrack, and the sound effects and commentary are what you'd expect, they're all quite good quality, actually, easily the best thing about this game. One cool thing about the game, is the ability to unlock "Funny SFX" in the career mode store (That was the "little thing" I was talking about). When you do, it's actually quite funny, and when I played the previous games with friends, we had a laugh with it, for a couple of matches...

Overall, I didn't expect the game to break any boundaries, but apart from the career mode, the game isn't even fun for a PS2 FIFA game, you're just as well getting a used copy of an older FIFA game, which go for about 50p-£2 in most game stores.

Presentation - 4.5/5
Graphics - 7/10
Gameplay - 5.8/10
Sound - 8/10
Overall - 63%

I'll eventually be doing a PES 2014 review, and then give the PS2 it's final send off, it might be a while, though, as college work, and my laziness is getting in the way.

2012 Year Review

So, 2012 is coming to a close, and 2013 is right around the corner. Usually, I feel upset about it, and I still kind of am, but not as much as I usually would. Maybe I used to feel upset because it mean't it's one year further away from what I call "The good old days!", but if 2012 showed me anything, is that todays days can be as fun as the "good old days", if that makes sense.

The only thing news-wise I want to talk about is the 2014 Scottish independence referendum being made official, that, to me, was the only bit of news that stood out.

I don't know about anyone else, but after doing a lot of research, I support independence, from what I've read, Scotland can survive, even the head of the anti-independence campaign said we could, and not only that, it seems we'll all be better off. For starters, we can say bye bye to paying the BBC's stupid TV license...

Besides, I'd rather be Scottish than British personally, and I want to hear Scottish accents and the Scots language on TV!

2012 was a great year for video games, I'll list my favourites this year:

Train Simulator 2013 - I never thought I'd find a game like this to be fun, but here we are. I've been hearing a lot about the Train Simulator games all over the internet, and I even have a good few friends who have the game, and say they love it, so I thought I'll get this year's game, and see how it is, it's surprisingly addicting, however, I ended up spending over £50 on DLC just to get all of the Scottish trains and routes, and that was while the sale was on!

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD - It's a nice throw back to the classic Pro Skater games, and even though I have them on practically every system they were released on, I still
enjoyed HD, mostly for it's havok physics bails, in 60+ FPS!

Back to the Future: The Game - I know what youse are thinking "Wasn't the game released in 2011?!", Yeah, the downloadable episodes were, but I get physical copies, and the physical copy, which comes with all the episodes, came out in early 2012, so it counts! These games live up to the TellTale name in being absolutely amazing! Well, that and the episode actually came out on time *cough*Sega*cough*, *cough*Valve*cough*

Sleeping Dogs - Everyone has been talking about it, and playing through it myself, it's no wonder, it's a GTA clone, that I think is better than GTA! It's set in a fictional Hong Kong, and you play as an Undercover cop, sounds awesome, right? Well it's better than it sounds, the game has a combat system, that actually works! I never thought beat-em-ups could ever make it into 3D and work, but Sleeping Dogs achieved it!

Also, 2 games came out for the Playstation 2 this year! FIFA 13 and PES 2013, they're the exact same as their previous year counterparts, but at least the PS2 got games, also, apparently Square Enix is coming out with a Final Fantasy expansion for the PS2 next year, sure, it's technically an expansion, but since the PS2 out of the box doesn't have a hard drive, it'll probably be standalone, so it counts! It'll be out early 2013, Only in Japan...

2012 was also a brilliant year for movies, I'll go as far as to say it's the best year for films ever! Many fantastic films came out this year, the new Muppets Movie, Men in Black 3, the Avengers, Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, Ted, all amazing films in their own right!

As for the music of 2012, all I have to say is: OPPA GANGNAM STYLE!

As for what I've been up to this year, it's been crazy for me, all sorts of things have happened to me.

I've started development on a new game, as Stated before, called Rossies 3D, which will be a first person shooter that will run on the Unity engine! I am working with fellow Rossi member, and this guys a nutter, so with him on board, the games humour is guaranteed to be intact! I am very exited about the game, and so are others I've told.

I've discovered a new language, it's known as Scots, and it turns out that I can understand this language perfectly without studying it or anything, and speak it quite well, most Scottish people can!
So esentially, I'm fluent in a second language, without putting in any effort to learn it, brilliant! My guess is that we learn it through neds and it being used as "slang", so like English, we learn it as we grow up, kind of making it a second first language, if that makes sense.

Knawin the Scots leid wioot tryin tae lear it is afwu braw! Nou Ah can pit aw o ma gemmes intae this leid! Ah'll e'en pit thaim intae Spainyie and Italian an aw!

If you understood that, then give yourself a pat on the back, you know another language!

Aside from them, and playing a bunch of awesome retro games, not much happened, just all kinds of little stuff happening.

• Most Played Game Platform: PC
• Most Played Game: The Sims 3 [PC] (According to my Raptr)
• First Game Played in 2012: Motorstorm: Artic Edge [PS2]
• Last Game Played in 2012: Bully: Scholarship Edition [PC]
• Favourite Game of 2012: Sleeping Dogs [PC]
• Favourite Film of 2012: Men in Black 3
• Favourite Song of 2012: PSY - Gangnam Style
• Favourite Gaming Moment of 2011: Me and Steven playing Robot Arena 2 for the first time (Not recorded on Blog)

Overall, I think 2012 was a great year, almost as good as the old days! I hope 2013 will be just as good!

My thoughts on 2011.

I thought since 2011 is coming to an end, I thought I'd give my opinion of this year based on my experience, Those who know me in real life would know that I don't usually like the modern years. It's surprisingly mixed this year, very much leaning towards the bad side, but still. I'll explain.

At the start of the year, literally, when it became new year, my cousins were all at our house to celebrate the new year, it's a tradition we have, we either go to our house or our grans. Anyway, my cousins, Steven and Giancarlo were in my room, and I asked them if they wanted to try Goldeneye out, because up until that point, they were practically trying to avoid playing my old games, they even seamed to think less of me because I played old games. However, they said yes this time, so we played a match, and we were having a great time, then Steven said to me "Maybe you could bring this over next time we're at grans, and I could bring extra controllers and games!", I finally convinced them that there was some fun to be had with retro games, and to me, that's a major plus for this year.

Also, another major plus in my opinion is that I finally left my awful high school, and started college! Which I'm very much enjoying!

Also, my collection of games have grown quite a bit, I'd never thought I'd own a Jaguar, let alone a Jaguar CD, or even consider getting a 3DO and a CD32, but here I am, playing all of them practically every day! Although now I'm having a problem with space now.

Another thing, it's a bit minor though, but I've been introduced to the Sam & Max franchise, and it was practically love at first sight, after playing and completing Episode 104, I instantly wanted everything with the Sam & Max name on it, good or bad!

Also, this really isn't a plus or a minus, but it was amazing how we got 5 PS2 games this year, 8 in America! I predict that the PS2 has another year in it left, I mean in march 2012, MLB 2K12 is coming to PS2, and it'll maybe get it's versions of FIFA 13 and PES 2013 (I hope so.), and that'll be it, the PS2's had one heck of a life, and it wasn't until this year that I realised that, long live the PS2!

Now onto the minuses, these are a bit personal, but these outweigh the good of this year, my great gran passed away, she lived until her 90s, so she's lived a good long life.

The more important one, my dad suddenly passed away this year, I suppose it's not all terrible, because they say those who passed away can still visit you in your dreams, and when that happens, it'll fell real, there's a term for this, but I have no idea what it is, but this is has actually happened to me, twice!

2011 Media Summary:

• Most Played Game Platform: Playstation 2
• Most Played Game: Goldeneye 007 [N64]
• First Game Played in 2011: Goldeneye 007 [N64]
• Last Game Played in 2011: Darkseed [CD32]
• Favourite Game of 2011: Portal 2 [PC]
• Favourite Film of 2011: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
• Favourite Song of 2011: None, I didn't like any of them.
• Favourite Gaming Moment of 2011: 30th October - The time when we first played a few proper games of 007 Nightfire on the Xbox!

Overall, it's mixed, alot of good has happened this year, but alot of bad has as well

The PS2's Final Moments: WWE All Stars Review

I'm going to start doing reviews on this site, I've been doing reviews for several sites, and since my readers think I'm good at reviewing, I though make some here, particularly this series I like to call "The PS2's final moments.", where I review the PS2's last games.
When did they come out? The more appropriate question is, when WILL they come out?
That's right! Believe it our not, they're still games being made for the PS2, usually a port of a game, although there's no mention on the advertisements for the games, or reviews of them, that's when I come along, I'm going to buy every individual game that comes out on the PS2 from 2011 onwards.

I also want to know, if there's any game I've missed that's coming to PS2, tell me about it, like I said I want to experience the PS2's last moments, I want to be with it, on it's deathbed, sitting beside it, holding it's controller, until it finally rests it's laser and is discontinued.

The first game in this series is WWE All Stars, yes, believe it or not, there's a PS2 version, don't believe me? Check on Amazon, it does exist, however, THQ themselves have never mentioned a PS2 port, why not?

As a PC gamer, at least when it comes to modern games, and a fan or Wrestling games, I am annoyed that THQ never release the WWE games on the PC, and have to resort to getting them on PS2, and recently, we were given a very good port of Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, the graphics were actually comparable to the other versions,and the game ran fast and the controls were very functional, in fact the only complaint I have with it is that the commentating wasn’t very good, sometimes they repeat lines a couple of times or just say something totally out of context to what’s going on, and the load times were awful, it can take up to 5 minutes to load up a match, apart from those, it was a great port and probably the best PS2 game in years, and being it was released when it was, I thought it would be the last, ending the PS2’s life with a bang.

The best thing was, unlike every other game from 2008 to present, they didn't just grab the Wii version and port it without a care in the world. The graphics were better on the PS2 overall, for instance, the ropes were 3D and the names on the wrestlers, telling you who you're facing, didn't have a black box behind them unlike the Wii version, the framerate was much more reliable too, in fact if I can recall right, it never slowed down on me, not even with 6 wrestlers in a TLC match, it's just things like that that proved that THQ put real effort into the PS2 version!

On the back of the instruction manual it has an ad for the then upcoming WWE All Stars, and having done a little research, I found that it was coming to the PS2. The game was going to be an unofficial sequel of sorts to WWF Wrestlemania: The Arcade game, it’ll be cartoony and not the slightest bit realistic, I loved that game, so I was looking forward to this, and after playing the PS3 version at HMV, and enjoyed it, I didn't expect a perfect port, but I still expected a great port nonetheless, like what we got for Smackdown vs. Raw 2011.

Before I started playing, I heard they grabbed the Wii version, and put it on the PS2, I thought that was kind of lazy, but I'll give it a chance.

The game as you imagine, doesn’t have much of a story, just win matches and become the champion, you can choose from 3 champions, I’ll get more into that later.

I started the game up, and played a quick match, and wow, was I disappointed, the arena looked pretty nice, the textures were actually really good, the best I’ve seen from the PS2 in fact, but the characters look awful, the texture quality is awful, the colours look all washed out, sometimes the clothes look as though they were just part of the wrestlers skin. The worst part is, the game doesn’t even run a good framerate despite this, The gameplay suffers big time from this, I’ll get to that later.

The music is... well, there’s no music, instead we have JR and Jerry “King” Lawler commentating the match, if you wanted a fast paced, fun game, put in some upbeat music, or at least something that give you the impression that it’s fast. I’m sick and tired of hearing JR and King’s annoying American accents, to give them credit, at least this time around they got it right, they don’t repeat the same lines constantly and everything they say relates to what’s going on in the match.

The sound effects are awful, they honestly sound like they recorded the sound effects using a microphone to a speaker and then compressed it. It just sounds awful.

The gameplay is terrible. the controls lag, what I mean by this is that the buttons only work half the time and sometimes you have to press a button multiple times for it to do something, the AI are annoying as well, sometimes, they just won’t give you any chance to attack, they’ll punch you when you’re down getting back up, this can get very frustrating.

There are a few game modes to keep you occupied, you have the fantasy warfare game types, where they have matches where they get a WWE legend and their modern equivalent, for example, Andre the Giant vs Big show, both of them are big and heavy, or Sgt. Slaughter vs. Jack Swagger, both of them being obsessed with their country, the USA.
You also have a Path of Champions mode, which a mentioned earlier, you can choose from 3 champions to chase, the classic WWE championship (Undertaker and Paul Bearer), the modern WWE championship (Randy Orton) and the WWE tag team championship (D-Generation X), they’re all the same thing, you play 10 matches, the championship one included, so there really isn’t much to say about that.

The presentation is average, well, it would be had it not of been for the awful muffled sound effects, and the terrible load times, they aren't as bad as Smackdown vs. Raw 2011, but they’re still awful.

To end on a high note, if you’re playing with a friend for the sake of laughing at the game for it’s many flaws, there’s actually some fun to be had with the game, because of the low gravity moves and, lack of music and bad sound effects give off the impression that they’re on the moon, you have a great laugh out of that.

Overall, it’s is an awful port, they put no effort into it whatsoever, they just grabbed the Wii version and dumped it on a PS2 disc. On multiplayer, however, it’s so bad, it’s good. Unless you can find it very cheap, like say 50p, and want to buy it for the multiplayer, don’t bother.

Graphics: 3/10 – They would be considered bad even if it was a launch title, and it can’t even run a good framerate, not even the great textures can save it.

Gameplay: 5/10 – Again, unless your playing it on multi-player to laugh at it, it’s just boring, the controls are delayed and sometimes don’t work.

Music: 1/10 – There’s no music in the game, and again, the commentators will really get on your nerves, The sound effects are Awful, absolutely awful, I give it 1 point for at least getting the commentary right.

Overall: 3/10 – Overall, A terrible port of a great game, I do not recommend you get this version. It wasn’t like you were going to get the PS2 version anyway, I’m just saying, don’t!

Was this any good? Give me your honest opinion, I want to know.