Games Beaten 2021

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Tue Nov 09, 2021 5:53 pm

VG_Addict wrote:I 101%ed Donkey Kong Country 1 today.

Nice work!

Post by **TheSSNintendo** » Tue Nov 09, 2021 7:56 pm

Finished The Darkside Detective a few days ago on Steam, and then went back and got all the remaining achievements.

Post by **Markies** » Tue Nov 09, 2021 8:11 pm

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2021!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Midtown Madness 3 (XBOX)
2. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (GEN)
3. Sonic Adventure 2 (SDC)
4. Mega Man 7 (SNES)
5. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra (PS2)
6. Bust A Move 4 (PS1)
7. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)
8. Gunbird 2 (SDC)
***9. The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN)***
10. Fable: The Lost Chapters (XBOX)
11. Growlanser: Heritage Of War (PS2)
12. Double Dragon (NES)
13. Star Ocean (SNES)
14. Pokemon Snap (N64)
15. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GCN)
16. Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (GEN)
17. Stella Deus: The Gate Of Eternity (PS2)
18. Super R-Type (SNES)
19. Threads Of Fate (PS1)
20. The Bouncer (PS2)
21. Phantasy Star Online Version 2 (SDC)
22. Final Fantasy III (NES)
23. Psychonauts (XBOX)
24. GrimGrimoire (PS2)
25. College Football's National Championship (GEN)
26. Chameleon Twist (N64)
27. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (NS)
28. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (PS1)
29. The Bard's Tale (XBOX)

I beat The Bard's Tale on the Microsoft XBOX this evening!

One of my best friends mostly plays games on Steam and handhelds, so unfortunately, there is not much crossover between the two of us. However, every now and then, he would play a game that is available on console in one way or another. A few years ago, he had bought The Bard's Tale on Steam and was telling me about it one week. Well, it piqued my interest and I went home to look it up to find that the game had been released on the original XBOX and I immediately added it to my Wishlist. Last year, it was time to buy a new XBOX game and I was looking for something longer. Looking at my list, I decided to purchase The Bard's Tale and it is finally time to give it a whirl.

I know nothing about the original PC games from back in the 80's. I had heard of them, but that was about it. That was a great starting point as the game had little to do with it. Instead, the game is a top down action RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate or Champions of Norrath. You can summon magical creatures to aid you in battle as you go through dungeons and defeat monsters all in the hope of rescuing a Princess at the top of a tower. It is by the number RPG affair, but almost the entire game is voice acted. The bard is completely voiced, by Cary Elwes and there is a Narrator cracking jokes at the Bard throughout the entire game. Also, there are creatures that come sing a little ditty throughout the game that was probably the best part. They were catchy and the funniest part of the game.

Honestly, the game is mostly good, but there are a few hiccups. The combat is engaging, but it gets a little repetitive in the 20 hours I played the game. There is no target button, so it is easy to miss your attacks and your summons can be idiots at times. Also, there are battles where the enemy would chew me up and then I'd do it again in the same layout and just demolish them, so the RNG was all over the place. I liked the dialogue and the narrator most of the time, but at the end, it became a bit much and the joke cracking at the Bard's expense grew stale as well.

Overall, I still really enjoyed The Bard's Tale. I've never played Baldur's Gate or Champions of Norrath or the 3D Gauntlet games, but this feels like a lesser version of those games. But, the writing and songs were still funny and the gameplay was still fun. So, if any of those games excite you, give the Bard's Tale a whirl as well!

Post by **Limewater** » Tue Nov 09, 2021 10:27 pm

The Dig (Lucasarts, 1995)

Another classic Lucasarts graphic adventure game. I played through this in the late nineties, but had forgotten most of it.
You play as Boston Low, commander of a team sent to plant explosives on an asteroid heading to earth. I should note that this was three years before Michael Bay gave us Armageddon. You discover that the asteroid is hollow and, during your investigation, it turns into a crystal space ship and transports you to another planet that is mostly desolate.
Compared to most Lucasarts games, it's pretty dark and grim. There are few characters to interact with, and you spend most of your time playing with ancient alien technology from a vanished race.
The game features prerendered CGI cutscenes as well as traditionally-animated cutscenes for the human characters, in addition to the standard pixel-art characters they used at the time. I did not feel like the traditionally-animated cutscenes were particularly attractive, and I didn't feel like they matched the pixel-art models all that well. Full Throttle, released the same year, did not have this problem.
I liked it pretty well. It wasn't their best outing (my personal favorite is Day of the Tentacle), but still very solid.
It's currently $5.99 on gog.com. I think I payed less purchasing it through a sale a couple of years ago. I played it on a Raspberry Pi 4 hooked to my TV. It was pretty easy to get working via ScummVM. If you want to run it on x86 architecture it's even easier.

Post by **ElkinFencer10** » Tue Nov 09, 2021 11:28 pm

Games Beaten in 2021 - 101
* denotes a replay

January (12 Games Beaten)

February (5 Games Beaten)

March (3 Games Beaten)

April (7 Games Beaten)

May (9 Games Beaten)

June (17 Games Beaten)

July (31 Games Beaten)

August (2 Games Beaten)

September (6 Games Beaten)

October (7 Games Beaten)

November (1 Games Beaten)

101. Call of Duty: Vanguard - PS5 - November 9

I'm one of the relatively few gamers who buys the new Call of Duty game most years almost exclusively for the campaign. It's the reason I didn't buy and will never buy Black Ops 4 (that and my eternal grudge against using Roman numerals but stupidly stylizing it "IIII" instead of the proper "IV"). That's not to say that I don't play and enjoy the multiplayer - in moderate doses, I quite enjoy Call of Duty's multiplayer - but my primary reason for buying them is always to play through the campaign and get a good power trip from experiencing a story from the perspective of a uncommonly skilled soldier. I also will go to my grave saying that World War II is the absolute supreme setting for a war game and that Nazis are the eternal perfect enemy; they're just damn killable. When Vanguard released not only with a superb looking story but also set once again in World War II, I was pretty immediately sold on it.

Vanguard's campaign has a "main" protagonist who serves as the narrator for the duration of the campaign, but the gameplay is split between several protagonists whose histories you see via flashback missions. Normally, I'm very picky about games with multiple protagonists because it often leaves me feeling interested in a number of characters but not satisfied with my time with any of them. As such, I was a bit skeptical when I first fired up Vanguard and realized that that was how this was going to play out. Fortunately, the writers went above and beyond here and not only kept the story firmly anchored to Arthur, the "main" protagonist, but they also went and created one of the most interesting and well-told stories Call of Duty has ever featured with a team of characters that mesh and flow together better than pretty much any game in the series. Whether you're seeing the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Stalingrad, or the Second Battle of El Alamein, Vanguard's campaign delivers an exceptional experience in both narrative and gameplay in a genre that normally does well with either one or the other but rarely both.

The multiplayer is, as usual, exactly what you expect. If you've played one Call of Duty multiplayer in the past decade and a half, you've pretty much played them all. Like every other Call of Duty you've played, the multiplayer is smooth, varied, and has a very well fleshed out loadout and perk system. I mean, seriously, what am I supposed to say? Activision prides itself on making this crap virtually identical from game to game save for the setting and weapon choices especially once Warzone came out. I've played a couple hours of the multiplayer, and it's a lot of fun. I thought Cold War's multiplayer was more fun, personally, but that's just because I like more modern guns for multiplayer; World War II is the supreme setting because I like to kill Nazis and storm the beaches of Normandy, not because I'm attached to the MP40 or Sten. Still, though, if multiplayer FPS is your thing, Vanguard's is as solid and polished as every other Call of Duty game released during my students' lifetimes.

Now to disappoint every Call of Duty player reading this; I don't care for Call of Duty's zombies mode. Don't get me wrong; it's fun. I just think Sniper Elite did the concept of "Nazi zombies" infinitely better than Call of Duty ever could. The storyline they build around it is stupid, the zombies' designs and behavior don't feel as quintessentially "zombie" as Nazi Zombie Army, and if I want a fast-paced zombie shooter, Left 4 Dead is better in every way. As such, I only played a little of the zombies mode just to say I tried it out. It's fine. That's about all I have to say about it. What is worth mentioning, however, is the performance and visuals. Holy shit, this game looks gorgeous on PS5. The pre-rendered cutscenes especially look almost indistinguishable from live action video in some scenes. Unfortunately, I did run into a few performance hiccups where the game would seemingly get "stuck" for a second or two before jerking back on pace, and in one or two instances, this would put the cutscene's audio about half a second off from the video which was jarring. I assume this is just an optimization issue that will probably get smoothed out in a future patch, and it only happened two or three times during gameplay, but it's definitely something worth mentioning. I'm not sure if this happens on Series X and Windows or just on PlayStation 5.

Call of Duty: Vanguard is an exceptionally good shooter, and in my opinion, arguably the best World War II shooter in the series. I'm personally a bit more fond of the original Call of Duty, but if I'm being honest, I think that's probably just my nostalgia for early 2000s FPS talking. The multiplayer is as fun as ever, the zombies mode is cool if that's your cup of tea, but the campaign...dude, the campaign is fantastic. The characters are amazing, the story is great, and the battles and Nazi murdering are endlessly satisfying. If you're like me and enjoy the campaign of these games as well as the multiplayer, you absolutely need to pick up Vanguard. If you just play Call of Duty for the multiplayer, then it's going to depend a bit more on your preference of setting. Still, though, I was pretty impressed with Cold War's campaign, and I think Vanguard surpassed that one.

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:24 am

Partridge Senpai's 2021 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
* indicates a repeat

Games 1~51

Games 52~100

101. Splatterhouse (PCE)
102. Shin Megami Tensei 2 (SFC)
103. Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
104. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner (Saturn)
105. Alundra (PS1)
106. Lunar: Silver Star Story (Saturn)
107. Tales of Xillia (PS3)
108. Digimon Rumble Arena (PS1)
109. Blue Stinger (DC)
110. Clockwork Knight (Saturn)
111. Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3)

112. Nightmare Creatures (PS1)

Around the time that I beat Castlevania 64 earlier this year, a friend of mine mentioned off-hand how as bad as that game was, this game, Nightmare Creatures, was even worse. Now I would describe Castlevania 64 as a not so much "awful" so much as "fairly maligned" game. Not as bad as all the hype pumps it up to be, but definitely deserving of a less than stellar reputation. Now something even more troubled than THAT, I had to see, and so I've been quietly hunting for this game ever since. I finally stumbled upon a copy recently, and so I made room in my busy schedule of playing Tales games to spend an afternoon and evening playing through it XD. It took me 5 or so hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware (albeit that real hardware was my PS3, so I wouldn't have to use a wired controller :b).

Nightmare Creature's story is mostly told through a lot of backstory in a narrated intro, but it mostly doesn't matter. Back in the mid-1600's, a cult did some evil experiments trying to make the ultimate life forms, but one of their members burned the whole thing down in 1666 (causing the Great Fire) and disappeared into history. Now it's the mid-1800's and that person's journal has resurfaced, and it's up to the two protagonists to stop the evil guy behind it all before his army of NIGHTMARE CREATURES (the game's words, not mine) takes over London (and the world too, I suppose). It's a very pulpy story, and once you actually start playing the game, it more or less totally disappears outside of little blurbs on the loading screens between levels (which actually went by so fast that I never had a chance to read them, but whether that's an issue with me playing it on a PS3 instead of a PS1 or if it's an issue with the game's quick loading times in general, I don't know and don't really care about).

The gameplay of Nightmare Creatures is a series of 20 levels (16 levels and 4 boss fights) through a London beset by the titular creatures. The levels do have secret and optional paths in them for extra goodies, but they're generally pretty linear. The controls are tank controls, and they feel AWFUL to play with on the D-pad. This game came out in '97 JUST as the first wave of dual-shock controllers were hitting store shelves (a little earlier than that, in some regions), and I pity whomever tried to play this with just the normal PS1 D-pad. Switching to analogue stick control mostly just maps the D-pad's controls onto the joysticks, but god damn does that make the game SO much more playable. It's a game whose control method takes a good deal of getting used to, and that goes especially for how your character will sometimes auto-lock onto an enemy, and sometimes they won't. Your jumping is also weirdly enough Simon Belmont-style, where moving forward ANY amount does the exact same HUGE jump forwards, while jumping from a standstill does a tiny forward hop. There isn't a large amount of platforming (mercifully), but there is at least one really annoying jump in the game, and the game would honestly be better if there were no mandatory platforming at all.

A huge part of the game is also the combat that takes place in each level. You have powerful sub-weapons which you find scattered throughout levels as well as healing items too, but your main attacks will be your heavy and light normal attacks. I played through as Nadia instead of the male character, as Nadia helps mitigate one of the game's most difficult aspects of combat: you are very slow, and your enemies are quite fast. Sub-weapons are far too rare to rely on them for standard combat, so getting good at dispatching enemies with your normal attacks is a must. It's something I stuck to so firmly that I ended up barely using any of my sub-weapons as a result ^^;. Most of combat just boils down to getting at least one hit in on an enemy, preferably when they're close to a corner, and then just pummeling them constantly to stun lock them until they die. Combat is more just a test of your ability to be a little patient with your blocking and then just bash enemies to death. It's tricky until you get the hang of it, but after the first few levels (and the horrid first boss) you probably won't be having too much trouble with combat, or at least nothing that the fairly numerous health pickups can't pave over.

The only real selling point of the game is the presentation, which is honestly pretty damn impressive for 1997. Kalypso did their own engine for this, and it's got some pretty bad texture warping problems with the environments, but the atmosphere and look of the world and monsters still holds up pretty well (at least as far as retro games are concerned). An especially cool feature is that you can slice monsters apart as you get better and better weapons, and the degree to which they fall apart dynamically as you happen to hit certain body parts (hands, heads, arms, getting outright cut in half) never fails to be really cool. It makes the janky combat feel more worth it with just how satisfying it is to slice those overly fast, clunky bastards in two XD. That said, the N64 version of the game apparently not only fixes a lot of the texture warping, but it also makes the awful platforming easier, so I would posit a guess that unless the controls map onto the N64's joystick REALLY badly, that's likely the definitive version of the game on console (but that version didn't come out in Japan TwT).

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Nightmare Creatures isn't awful, but it really probably isn't worth your time. It's not terribly interesting or difficult beyond how poorly it controls, but it does have its aesthetic going for it. The big trouble here is that it's a game that isn't very fun to play, can often be frustrating, and you'll get a lot of the aesthetic enjoyment out of just watching a Let's Play or a long play online or something. It's something I'd say certainly isn't as interesting as Castlevania 64, so I'd put it beneath that game for sure, and it's something better off left to only people very interested in janky 3D games from the 5th generation.

Post by **Ack** » Wed Nov 10, 2021 4:50 pm

1. Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard (PC)(Adventure)
2. Revulsion (PC)(FPS)
3. Nonogram - Master's Legacy (PC)(Puzzle)
4. Sekiro (PC)(Action-Adventure)
5. Grim Dawn (PC)(Action RPG)
6. Grim Dawn: Ashes of Malmouth (PC)(Action RPG)
7. Grim Dawn: Forgotten Gods (PC)(Action RPG)
8. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage (PC)(FPS)
9. Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior (PC)(FPS)
10. Shrine (PC)(FPS)
11. Record of Lodoss War - Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (PC)(Adventure)
12. Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (PC)(Action)
13. Red Alliance (PC)(FPS)
14. The Forest (PC)(Horror)
15. Pixel Puzzles: Japan (PC)(Puzzle)
16. 12 is Better Than 6 (PC)(Top Down Shooter)
17. Torchlight II (PC)(RPG)
18. An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire (PC)(RPG)
19. Port of Call (PC)(Walking Sim)
20. NeonCode (PC)(Walking Sim)
21. Carrion (PC)(Adventure)
22. Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (PC)(Walking Sim)
23. Helltaker (PC)(Puzzle)
24. Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr (PC)(RPG)
25. Castlevania: Bloodlines (Switch)(Platformer)
26. Treachery in Beatdown City (Switch)(RPG)
27. Zeno Clash (PC)(Action)
28. Borderlands: Enhanced Edition (PC)(FPS/RPG)
29. Ion Fury (PC)(FPS)
30. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood (PC)(FPS)
31. Shrine II (PC)(FPS)
32. Lycanthorn I (PC)(Action Platformer)
33. Lycanthorn II (PC)(Action Platformer)
34. DLC Quest (PC)(Adventure)
35. Live Freemium or Die (PC)(Adventure)
36. Satellite Reign (PC)(Real-Time Tactics)
37. Heat Signature (PC)(Action)
38. HellSign (PC)(Action)

HellSign is a game about a supernatural hunter in Australia. Presented as a shooter from an isometric viewpoint, you investigate houses, junkyards, and patches of woods to face a variety of monsters, gather signs of bigger spirits, and then gear up to face them in much bigger boss fights. While there is a lot of action and combat rolling to dodge the numerous opponents you'll face, the real goal is investigation and preparation.

The story is simple: you wake up with amnesia after a weird dream of Hell and discover a massive tattoo on your back. You then pull a ghost-fueled take on Dude, Where's My Car? with an assortment of nasty characters in the underbelly of Adelaide, South Australia's ghost hunter world. Prepare to do some unsavory things to get the situation resolved.

As you go, you get money, which you use to buy gear, expand your arsenal, or pick up vital info on enemy monsters. What the Hell is that thing reaching out of a painting? Why are there horses of spiders? Can I even kill the door that eats me? These are questions you'll ask, and information is your weapon. It's even more vital against bosses, as you learn what protective gear will keep you safe, what bullets work the best, and what sorts of traps will be super effective against all manner of massive ghosts.

You also gain levels, which unlocks skill points to build your character however you want. If you want better investigatory, firearms abilities, wearing different gear, or using traps or explosives, this is how you do it. And once you have this, you buy those items to kill enemies and protect yourself or find the evidence of a bigger haunting. And when you pick a mission type from the array offered, you can do as much or as little as you want before getting in your van and getting the hell out.

Why do that? Well, HellSign is a horror game; furniture shakes, doorways sometimes lead to portals in other worlds, every corpse may be a trap, and the walls bleed. A power surge may mean a lamp is about to explode or creatures of pure darkness are arriving. A growing pool of blood? It might be a horde of centipedes or the flailing arms of the Nephilim come to claim your body and soul. Best to escape when you can. On the hardest levels, you have the Ghast after you, a nasty spirit that may just kill you unless you can lead it into a preplanned trap.

I enjoyed HellSign a lot, but it isn't perfect. The devs stopped adding updates, and there are some quality of life enhancements and bug fixes that the game could have used. It also turns into a samey grindfest after a while, because there just isn't that much differing content. After a few hours, you may not know how bad it will get, but you have an idea of what you're gonna seen thrown at you.

I liked it, but it's around $20 in Steam right now. It often goes on sale around $10 though, so it's worth waiting for.

Post by **Markies** » Thu Nov 11, 2021 11:51 pm

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2021!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Midtown Madness 3 (XBOX)
2. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (GEN)
3. Sonic Adventure 2 (SDC)
4. Mega Man 7 (SNES)
5. Xenosaga Episode III: Also Sprach Zarathustra (PS2)
6. Bust A Move 4 (PS1)
7. Phantasy Star IV (GEN)
8. Gunbird 2 (SDC)
***9. The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GCN)***
10. Fable: The Lost Chapters (XBOX)
11. Growlanser: Heritage Of War (PS2)
12. Double Dragon (NES)
13. Star Ocean (SNES)
14. Pokemon Snap (N64)
15. Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (GCN)
16. Castle Of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (GEN)
17. Stella Deus: The Gate Of Eternity (PS2)
18. Super R-Type (SNES)
19. Threads Of Fate (PS1)
20. The Bouncer (PS2)
21. Phantasy Star Online Version 2 (SDC)
22. Final Fantasy III (NES)
23. Psychonauts (XBOX)
24. GrimGrimoire (PS2)
25. College Football's National Championship (GEN)
26. Chameleon Twist (N64)
27. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild (NS)
28. Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (PS1)
29. The Bard's Tale (XBOX)
30. Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (SNES)

I completed Super Star Wars: Super Empire Strikes Back on the Super Empire Strikes Back on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System this evening!

Back when I first started collecting Retro video games, I picked up the original Super Star Wars game. It was incredibly cheap and I remember them as a kid. Unfortunately, my nostalgia blocked any critical view point of the game. I played that game for several years, beating a few levels every now and then until I finally powered through it. The game was the perfect definition of bashing your face into the wall until the wall cracks. Well, skip ahead to April 2013 and I was doing some game shopping. I had traded in some games and I was looking for one last game to pick up as I had some store credit. Well, after a long bit of searching, I finally decided upon Super Empire Strikes Back and I decided it was time for some more face smashing. Running out of games in my Backlog meant it was finally time to sit down and smash my face against the wall.

Much like Super Star Wars, Super Empire Strikes Back has some amazing visuals and sounds. For a SNES game, the game looks and feels like the movies. I was stunned and amazed at the graphics and the music for the game. It really felt like I was watching the movies. Along with that, the game does a nice representation of the movie. Each set piece is there and it is really cool to see Darth Vader on your screen. The shine is there and I was still amazed by how everything looks.

But, my God, the difficulty is still absolutely unreal. The enemies are way too fast for you to deal with, so you are constantly getting shot at or hit by the enemies. You also don't know when you are taking damage or even when you are doing damage. It's all so random and happening so quickly that you don't know what to do. And all of this is tenfold when it comes to the Bosses as their health bars are ginormous compared to yours. Besides side scrolling levels, there are also these shooter levels and these flying levels that you have no idea what to do or even to control.

Overall, I really began to dislike my time with Super Empire Strikes Back. The enemy placement and constant stream of enemies make the game incredibly difficult to play. To beat the game, you have to go slowly and abuse the password system. That is just to mitigate the game and not really a point of approval. Its hard to recommend these games, but I feel like I'll finish up the series. Someday.

Post by **MrPopo** » Fri Nov 12, 2021 1:51 am

Personally, I think Super Jedi is the easiest of the three. It's got the password system of Empire and then several of the heroes have some really powerful weapons to clear through enemy nonsense.

Post by **Note** » Fri Nov 12, 2021 2:13 am

Games Beaten 2021 List:

1. Golden Axe II (GEN)
2. Time Crisis [Special Mode] (PS1)
3. Streets of Rage (GEN)
4. Time Crisis: Project Titan (PS1)
5. Rayman Origins (360)
6. Borderlands (360)
7. Streets of Rage 4 (Switch)*
8. King of Dragons (SNES)
9. Wild Guns (SNES)
10. Star Fox (SNES)
11. Guardian Heroes (SAT) [2x]*
12. World of Illusion (GEN)
13. Raiden Fighters Jet (360)
14. Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive (360)*
15. Streets of Rage 3 (GEN)
16. Street Fighter III: Third Strike (Xbox)*
17. Mushihimesama Futari (360)
18. Guwange (360)
19. Star Fox 64 (N64)*
20. Soul Calibur (DC)*
21. Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition (GEN)
22. Xeno Crisis (GEN)
23. Galactic Attack (SAT)
24. Die Hard Arcade (SAT)
25. Luigi's Mansion (GC)
26. Steel Empire (GEN)
27. Virtua Cop (SAT)

28. Virtua Cop 2 (SAT)

As a fan of light gun games, I always enjoy spending some time with one, and since I didn't own a Saturn around the time of release, it's been nice to put some more hours into the Virtua Cop series. The first game I played a good amount because my childhood friend had it as a pack-in with his Saturn, but I wasn't as familiar with the sequel. I'm glad that I finally remedied that, because I think Virtua Cop 2 is better than it's predecessor.

The sequel is similar to the first as there's only three levels to start off with, each level a bit more difficult than the previous. Also, the colored icons around enemies are back. Make sure to hit enemies before their circular icons turn red, otherwise you're gonna take damage! One difference and improvement, is that VC2 has branching paths, which adds to the replay value and is good motivation to revisit the game. Once you finish the three selectable areas, a fourth area is unlocked, so with the branching paths and additional level containing the final boss battle, the sequel has a bit more content.

The graphics in the second game are an improvement, and it does seem like Sega's development team had a better handle on creating 3D games by the time of this title's release. The gameplay is also a big improvement IMO, as the different chase scenes are way more chaotic than the first game's settings. VC2 starts out with a bang as after a scene in the street and shop, you are thrown right into a car chase. The soundtrack is also really good IMO, and gets the player pretty amped for the action ahead. The OST is something I can throw on in the background around the house, even when not playing the game.

I played through the game solo, but I think this one is probably best played in co-op mode with a friend. Turns out my partner grew up with the Virtua Cop games on her PC, so I'll have to track down a second Saturn Stunner, so we can get a two player session in! Overall, this is a really fun game and I'd recommend to anyone that's a fan of the genre. Wish we got a home release of Virtua Cop 3 -- however, I believe it's playable on a modded original Xbox. Anyway, give this one a go if you haven't yet!

racketboy.com

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