| Disgaea: Hour of Darkness |
released August 2003, purchased March 2004
Picked this up during a personal PS2 drought, based on the glowing recommendations of everyone in the world.
And I just could not take it.
Partially, it was the old school graphics. Visually, this is a PS1 game, and that is no exaggeration. But I could have easily gotten past that - I'll play GBA games on my TV, for crying out loud - if the gameplay itself had gripped me. But I found it painfully and unnecessarily opaque. This is not a game for attracting new fans to the style (it's a tactics game, did I mention that?), it's a deep and muddy reward for people who already like this sort of thing. It just seemed like at every point where they could have made the game fun, they took the fast train to Tedium. Population: a million palette-shifted 2D sprites.
Just not my thing. Could have worked for me as a GBA title, but I felt like such a chump sitting there in front of my giant TV arranging cardboard characters on a grid map and clicking through menus.
I liked the concept - young renegade demon prince battles his way across Hell to be the next Lord of the Underworld. I liked the characters - exploding anime penguins! I liked some story elements - you have to petition the demonic Senate, and if they deny your request you can battle them for it. I just didn't like the gameplay.
Memory Score: And then you level up weapons by going inside them? WTF?
released April 2004, purchased April 2004
This was the worst goddamn game in the world.
I had high expectations for this title. You can laugh, but I trust the Resident Evil series to be awesome. (If you are laughing, you probably haven't played Resident Evil 4: No Subtitle.) And Outbreak was the big online venture. This was a big reason why I took my PS2 online. Even just saying "Resident Evil Online" summoned up a glorious imaginative fun world of candy and lollipops.
Unfortunately, it was to remain imaginary.
There is almost nothing about this game that can redeem it. It is a collection of great ideas melted into slag. Episodic levels that could have focused on the trials of everyday people trying to live through the Raccoon City T-Virus outbreak are demolished by nonsensical audio samples and horrible loading times. Squad-based multiplayer gameplay that could have enlivened the Resident Evil formula is buried under unbalanced characters and terrible loading times. An online exclusive that had the potential to bust the "PS2 online" concept wide open was ballgagged by an inability to communicate with your online partners and disgusting loading times.
I suppose I could have picked up the PS2 hard drive to pare down the horrible, terrible, disgusting, tension-killing, door-animating load times. But even after dropping $100, I still would have had the awful audio, the confusing where-the-f-am-I gameplay, and the hilariously archaic controls.
The cutscenes were pretty sweet though.
Memory Score: Sucked ripe juicy ass. Although I still enjoy imagining "Resident Evil Online."
released May 2004, purchased May 2004
click here for my review written in May 2004!
Maybe I was just coming off a deep blue funk (see above), but I thought this game was terrific.
The Western is a genre that everybody wants but nobody buys. I tend to seek them out, perhaps because of this strange-but-true dichotomy. I recall getting super excited about Gunslinger, a Wild West title that was making the preview rounds before the PS2 even came out. And then Gunslinger disappeared into the foggy mists of vaporware. Happily, Red Dead Revolver rose to take its place, albeit four years later.
RDR delivers. The art direction is unique and detailed. The action tweaks the typical third-person shooter game with Wild West elements (like pistol showdowns and horseback levels.) The splitscreen multiplayer is fast and fun. The environments covers every Wild West film standard in the book. The unlockables are interesting and worth collecting. It was just too short, clocking in at around six hours.
Aside: I found a American-made manga called No Man's Land, which is a Wild West story with horror elements. Sort of Trigun-esque. An anime Deadlands. I'm reading it and thinking, Man, this looks familiar. When I get to the bonus sketchbook pages, it hits me: they copied the environments from Red Dead Revolver. Take a look; it is a blatant swipe job (unless the artist was in fact an RDR resigner, but what are the odds of that?) It casts a shadow on the included comments "I like to draw floorplans and map out buildings even if we don't see them in the manga ... Lots of research and attention to historical detail is required to get it right." Actually, you mean lots of pausing Red Dead Revolver was required to get it right.
Not that RDR was a bastion of originality itself, mind you. Much of the plot is culled from several specific Western movies ("The Quick and the Dead" being the most obvious.) And the soundtrack is composed entirely of classic Spaghetti Western tracks (which is totally cool with me.) But there is a distinction between a loving homage and uncredited tracing.
Memory Score: Will it stand as the best Western game ever?
Next time: A big movie tie-in with limited appeal, the only driving game you'll ever need... and what's this? A sports title?
