released November 2004, purchased November 2004
From the Justify Your Accessory Department.
One year after the EyeToy's release, I don't think anybody had yet figured out what to do with it. This is another Play-style minigame collection, but again lacks any kind of tournament feature. How can a half-assed EA movie tie-in title figure this out, but two (and more!) EyeToy-focused games miss the obvious point. The way these dopey games handle multiplayer is the modern day equivalent of playing two man Mario Bros by handing the controller back and forth. Terrible.
On the positive side, the year between Play and Sega Superstars shows off in polish... not to mention the incredible Sega fan-service. Each game is based on a classic Sega title, from Virtua Fighter to Sonic to NiGHTS. Even freaking Billy hatcher is in there. None of them are very good, but the company reverence is fun. Just in case there's any Sega fans still out there.
Memory Score: Best one: Puyo Pop
| Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal |
released November 2004, purchased November 2004
click here for my review written in March 2005!
Completely phoned in.
This is what happens when your dev team realizes that they can't beat the awesomeness of the previous game, but they have to crap out another sequel in time for the holiday shopping season.
Almost nothing in this game rises above the bar set by Going Commando. It's all very same-y. That's not all bad, as I said in my review, this series does more on a bad day than most games ever achieve. But it still ranks as a huge disappointment. Ratchet & Clank was a franchise that I came to love, and this sequel-sequel pretty much ruined it for me. The whole time I'm playing it, I'm thinking "jeez, why am I doing this again." The magic is gone.
But said magic was replaced with an online mode, which I (predictably) did not care for. Unbalanced, spastic, and already dominated by obnoxious pros by the time I got to it. The only cool thing was the ability to do online multiplayer split-screen. So, like, you can have two people play together on one TV and still go online.
Memory Score: And like that, a franchise is buggered
released November 2004, purchased December 2004
Speaking of EyeToy AND online play, here's my Best PS2 Online Game Ever. Me, Mike and Scott went through quite a time where we played this every week, connecting two states and three cats.
WCP hit right in the middle of the big Hold 'Em boom, and after plenty of bad advice (remember, I thought Resident Evil Outbreak was going to be the killer app), this was the game that enabled me to talk my buddies into online PS2 and in-home wireless networks. Finally! I'm sure they think it was worth the setup. EMBARRASSED SMILEY
More often than not, the whole thing worked... WiFi + PS2 + EyeToy + headset mics. Which always surprised us.
Shame that the game is almost unbearably ugly and amateurish. Still, for online multiplayer poker, all you really need is a robot to track cards. And it did.
We should get back into this one.
Memory Score: "He's not intimidated... this is his game: heads-up poker!"
Next time: a sleeper hit based on a movie license, a sequel based on a sleeper hit, and a new-franchise hit based on goring up ancient mythology... that made me sleepy.
