Dec 2, 2021 17:29:30 GMT Johnny Blitz said:

Any fans of God Hand here? I forgot I had it on my PS3 and am about halfway through it. I played it a ton back in the day but replaying makes me appreciate it even more. I love the combat and evasion system. The camera is a little wonky but really not bad once you get a feel for it. Highly recommended.

Also playing Symphony of the Night again for the 50th or so time lol. Going to actually try and get the 206% completion this time. Pray for me that I get the Crisseagrim quickly haha.

God Hand is fantastic. Has to be a good 4 or so years ago from when I played it, probably my 2nd favorite game from the now defunct Clover Studios/Capcom(Viewtiful Joe 1 stands as the top dog for me, there's a game I beg can get ported off GC/PS2). One of Shinji Mikami's best works, it's not ever going to touch his very best, Resident Evil 4 but it's damn good. IGN giving it a 3/10 is some absolutely hilarious shit, I know opinions and stuff, but cmon. I think the game being so difficult made reviewers loathe the game but it's not THAT bad once you get a feel of the game. 

HILARIOUS, very deep combat system, the story is so batshit crazy and ridiculously over the top it makes it so good. The camera admittedly takes time to get used to but a neat trick to do is when using the roulette that you can rotate Gene around quicker without needing to actually using a skeleton card. I can't say enough how deep the combat is, you basically can make Gene/main protagonist a CAW/Create a Wrestler and give him whatever moveset you want to do.

There was 2 difficulties, easy and normal, went with the latter but I wasn't great enough to ever get past LVL 2 or sometimes LVL 3. Much like with Resident Evil 4, Mikami was genius enough to make the game more difficult based off how well your doing and make it easier based off if your struggling to survive. The game kicks your absolute ass, the difficulty curve is pretty brutal and you can find yourself getting dropped by the 1st demon in the 1st level if you aren't familiar with the combat. 

An absolute underrated gem, one of the best beat em ups of "modern" PS2 era time. 

Finished up the first Drakengard, definitely not something I'm going to be returning to, the melee is fun enough, but holy hell the flying missions are ass, and there's a lot of them. Literally only a single boss fight wasn't dragon back, and it was the only decent boss fight in the game. Then the final ending gives you this horribly unfair rhythm game, things come so fast that unless you're immaculate at fast reads, there's no way you're just walking through it, because a single mistake on the final minute means failure. I only managed to get through it because you're able to pause and the screen stays visible, so as long as you're quick, you can string together quick sets then pause again to get down another. Is a pity, I really did enjoy the ground stuff, even for being a dated grindfuck...but the rest kills any desire to replay.

On to Drakengard 2, probably start Monday, hopefully evolves enough to not be half terrible.

Drakengard 2 was mostly an improvement on the first, aside from the chapter set up and ditching the dashing attack, I enjoyed it more across the board. I still didn't care much for the dragon missions, but were better this go round. Though I only get one ending on this one, because you have to do a complete playthrough for each ending, and I'm not up for that right now.

EDIT: Though there was one thing that really bothered me, in Drakengard, life would spawn between every 15-20 hit combo, in Drakengard 2...I was dropping 100+ hit combos without seeing a shred of life. With money not being plentiful (without grinding) and medium life vials being 600, it could be really annoying to not get any life drops, especially on some of the longer levels. Some levels just love to taunt you with crates, and then you break 'em when you need 'em, and none of them are life...again, annoying on the longer levels.

See if 3 can make another jump and finally get me to enjoy the flying missions.

Had some time before Forbidden West, so jumped back into my PS2 catalog for a little western fun.

Red Dead Revolver: It has some nice bones, definitely aged out a bit, shooting is functional enough, but the quickdraws are barely so. You could drop your marker where ever, but if it didn't turn red it doesn't matter; literally the opponent's entire face covered in marks, but they're all yellow so you lose. Also, dick move on the final boss fight, the ENTIRE GAME every single quickdraw is set up with a letterbox staredown, and you pull right when the letterbox fades away; final boss, the second he stops talking it's quickdraw time and you're dead if you don't know it and have to do the whole fight over again (small wave of enemies, lifebar, then the quickdraw. Only like 2 minutes, but still). It's still an enjoyable game, but not one I can say is just as fun as when it first dropped.

Gun: Now this one aged pretty fucking well, it's like the middle ground accomplishment between Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption, small map and story is pretty direct (but well told), but enjoyable start to finish. Shooting is on point, drop headshots like it's nothing, I did dislike reload being on the left analog stick. My only real issue is that many, maybe most, missions come down to protecting one thing or another, very escort heavy. Though thankfully, most of them are pretty forgiving. But this was the best video game western Pre-Redemption...okay, maybe second behind the Call of Juarez (haven't played it in too long to recall).Side quests were pretty well off too, though the Pony Express's time limits were strict as hell, if you got a direction wrong for a half second you'd lose on many, some were literally only like 10 seconds to failyre. Only thing I didn't complete was the Poker challenges, needed to win like 6 tables of hold 'em, and that's a long tedious affair. Though for a PS2 game, they were exquisite with the checkpoints, pretty much any automated cut away from the action would be a restart if you failed. I'm especially happy about this for the final boss, as his first phase was annoying as hell, but I didn't understand the second phase enough until I was out of the ammo I needed to complete it (though it sucks you literally can't win without specific ammo), would have been so pissed to play the whole thing over again. In general the final area did sort of end it on the least enjoyable the game is though, suddenly bombarded by super strong sharpshooters that take forever to kill; made more annoying by the last, lengthy, stretch forcing you to man a super slow and not incredibly accurate cannon, wore out its welcome quickly, but just a minor quibble on a sudden and drastic difficulty spike, not unmanageable, just tedious.

Where Revolver you have to deal with quite a bit of jank, and have to accept its age...Gun is still a damn fine game. The fact they're barely a year apart is a real testament to Gun's development, blows it out of the water. 

So it feels like every year there's a platforming series that I do a dive into, usually a replay. I did the DKC Trilogy few years ago, did a Jak 1-3, and Jak Racing for a year, did the Crash Trilogy and Spyro trilogy. Last year, I dominated this thread with a visit for (most) of the Ratchet & Clank series in anticipating for the awesome R&C: Rift Apart that came out last year. And I went to town on the Mega Man series, both the originals outside of MM11 and X1-5(Not sure I ever touch X6 & X7, not feeling brave) This year's flavor of the Spring/summer?



Yes Sly Cooper, Sucker Punch who are best known for the InFamous series & Ghost of Tsushima  got their first break with Sony as a first party with this series. Having played all 4 of these games about 7 years ago(Had to look it up!), I had been itching to do a revisit to this series for quite some time so I said why not? The gameplan is to tackle one game of the series each month with April belonging to Sly Cooper & The Thievius Raccoonus, May going to Sly 2: Band of Thieves, June giving way to Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves and July capping it off with Sly: Thieves in Time. 

Going back to the 1st game, one of my instant regrets was not getting the platinum which in hindsight...........is a pretty easy ask. You don't need to do any time trials or anything of that nature, you just need to finish the game and get all the collectibles. On his revisit, there was no doubt.....I was capturing what long evaded me. 

Despite being a game from the 2000's, this game still holds up really well. The story and cel shaded design still hold up so well, even if the voice acting in the beginning of the game feels a touch wooden(The game comes along nicely later on and the rest of the series it is really good). The story is simple, you play a racoon thief by the name of Sly Cooper. Think of him as the platformer's answer to Lupin the 3rd, yes he steals but he is good hearted. He comes from a long line of ancestors who were master thieves of their timeline so as such, he has a standard to meet and is attempting to reclaim the very book that consists of all of his ancestors secrets and history: The Thievius Racoonus(Hence the title of the game). Cooper is accompanied by a nerdy turtle who is the "Brains" of the crew, named Bentley who has a very Harry Carey(Long time Cubs announcer) sounding voice and is pretty snarky but means well. He gives intel consistently to Sly Cooper to help him out during his consistent rendezvous all around the world. There's also the "Muscle" of the group in the loveable Murray, a giant clumsy hippo who is super strong and also a great van driver and serves as the getaway driver of the crew along with the aforementioned braun. There's also their enemy in Carmelita Montoya Fox, a female fox who plays inspector(Think of her as a more attractive Inspector Zenigata from Lupin the 3rd) who while she tracks down the heroes, she still tries to capture them since they are criminals who are stealing, even if it's from the rich(Robin Hood much?). She is still good but her and Sly Cooper represent a Ying/Yang sort of relationship where the two respect each other but one being with the police and the other being a criminal, their paths cross and both are enemies all the while. 

The story of Sly 1 goes that Sly Cooper lost his parents because of the antagonists of the game, The Fiendish Five targeting to kill the Cooper thief lineage while trying to recover the aforementioned Thievius Racoonus book, believing that the power of these thieves lie in the book. This made Sly Cooper with the death of his mother & father an orphan, where he met Bentley and Murray in the same orphanage and the three developed a brotherly comradery to make it big and etch themselves as rags to riches success stories, even if they are going by the way of pillaging. Sly Cooper crosses paths throughout this game with the same five who murdered his parents as he attempts to reclaim the lost pages and book that mean everything to his family. It's a simple story but the voice acting of the series is done pretty well and the comic book cutscenes do this game well. The cel shaded graphics also look well, you either love or hate the design admittedly....I fall in the former category. 

The gameplay is your standard PS2 3D platformer, only this game focuses more upon the tricks of the trade you pick up from your ancestors by collecting clue bottles that serve as the collectibles of the game. There can be anywhere from 30 to 40 per area and collecting each of these allow you to unlock a giant safe in each level that if opened via a code provided by Bentley due to the full completion of clue bottles, gives you a page of the book that allows you to learn a new ability during your adventure. We're talking a dive bomb, a roll, a mine throw, super slow-mo and superspeed among other cool tricks. Admittedly, the game is a little unresponsive with some controls such as the grab command when trying to hang onto hooks to swing from platform to platform and the combat segments are pretty lackluster, you can't just swing wildly vs the opposition. Very minor nitpicking admittedly though because the game still runs smooth even on PS3 emulation! 

Game length is rather short, I got the illustrious platinum and beat the game within 3 sittings. This game probably runs you around 8 hours or so give or take. Each level is consisted of one pseudo open world portion followed by either a short level or minigames. The minigames are hit and miss admittedly with this game. They can be anything from racing to rail shooting to collecting items in a certain amount of time while avoiding hazardous animals, run of the mill stuff you would expect from this type of platformer. 

Game is overall pretty good, from what I remember Sly 2 still is my favorite but I am really curious how it holds up in a replay 7 years later. Enjoyed my time in a revisit with Sly 1, game still holds up strong! 

Apr 20, 2022 1:08:56 GMT Blindy said:

So it feels like every year there's a platforming series that I do a dive into, usually a replay. I did the DKC Trilogy few years ago, did a Jak 1-3, and Jak Racing for a year, did the Crash Trilogy and Spyro trilogy. Last year, I dominated this thread with a visit for (most) of the Ratchet & Clank series in anticipating for the awesome R&C: Rift Apart that came out last year. And I went to town on the Mega Man series, both the originals outside of MM11 and X1-5(Not sure I ever touch X6 & X7, not feeling brave) This year's flavor of the Spring/summer?



Yes Sly Cooper, Sucker Punch who are best known for the InFamous series & Ghost of Tsushima  got their first break with Sony as a first party with this series. Having played all 4 of these games about 7 years ago(Had to look it up!), I had been itching to do a revisit to this series for quite some time so I said why not? The gameplan is to tackle one game of the series each month with April belonging to Sly Cooper & The Thievius Raccoonus, May going to Sly 2: Band of Thieves, June giving way to Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves and July capping it off with Sly: Thieves in Time. 

Going back to the 1st game, one of my instant regrets was not getting the platinum which in hindsight...........is a pretty easy ask. You don't need to do any time trials or anything of that nature, you just need to finish the game and get all the collectibles. On his revisit, there was no doubt.....I was capturing what long evaded me. 

Despite being a game from the 2000's, this game still holds up really well. The story and cel shaded design still hold up so well, even if the voice acting in the beginning of the game feels a touch wooden(The game comes along nicely later on and the rest of the series it is really good). The story is simple, you play a racoon thief by the name of Sly Cooper. Think of him as the platformer's answer to Lupin the 3rd, yes he steals but he is good hearted. He comes from a long line of ancestors who were master thieves of their timeline so as such, he has a standard to meet and is attempting to reclaim the very book that consists of all of his ancestors secrets and history: The Thievius Racoonus(Hence the title of the game). Cooper is accompanied by a nerdy turtle who is the "Brains" of the crew, named Bentley who has a very Harry Carey(Long time Cubs announcer) sounding voice and is pretty snarky but means well. He gives intel consistently to Sly Cooper to help him out during his consistent rendezvous all around the world. There's also the "Muscle" of the group in the loveable Murray, a giant clumsy hippo who is super strong and also a great van driver and serves as the getaway driver of the crew along with the aforementioned braun. There's also their enemy in Carmelita Montoya Fox, a female fox who plays inspector(Think of her as a more attractive Inspector Zenigata from Lupin the 3rd) who while she tracks down the heroes, she still tries to capture them since they are criminals who are stealing, even if it's from the rich(Robin Hood much?). She is still good but her and Sly Cooper represent a Ying/Yang sort of relationship where the two respect each other but one being with the police and the other being a criminal, their paths cross and both are enemies all the while. 

The story of Sly 1 goes that Sly Cooper lost his parents because of the antagonists of the game, The Fiendish Five targeting to kill the Cooper thief lineage while trying to recover the aforementioned Thievius Racoonus book, believing that the power of these thieves lie in the book. This made Sly Cooper with the death of his mother & father an orphan, where he met Bentley and Murray in the same orphanage and the three developed a brotherly comradery to make it big and etch themselves as rags to riches success stories, even if they are going by the way of pillaging. Sly Cooper crosses paths throughout this game with the same five who murdered his parents as he attempts to reclaim the lost pages and book that mean everything to his family. It's a simple story but the voice acting of the series is done pretty well and the comic book cutscenes do this game well. The cel shaded graphics also look well, you either love or hate the design admittedly....I fall in the former category. 

The gameplay is your standard PS2 3D platformer, only this game focuses more upon the tricks of the trade you pick up from your ancestors by collecting clue bottles that serve as the collectibles of the game. There can be anywhere from 30 to 40 per area and collecting each of these allow you to unlock a giant safe in each level that if opened via a code provided by Bentley due to the full completion of clue bottles, gives you a page of the book that allows you to learn a new ability during your adventure. We're talking a dive bomb, a roll, a mine throw, super slow-mo and superspeed among other cool tricks. Admittedly, the game is a little unresponsive with some controls such as the grab command when trying to hang onto hooks to swing from platform to platform and the combat segments are pretty lackluster, you can't just swing wildly vs the opposition. Very minor nitpicking admittedly though because the game still runs smooth even on PS3 emulation! 

Game length is rather short, I got the illustrious platinum and beat the game within 3 sittings. This game probably runs you around 8 hours or so give or take. Each level is consisted of one pseudo open world portion followed by either a short level or minigames. The minigames are hit and miss admittedly with this game. They can be anything from racing to rail shooting to collecting items in a certain amount of time while avoiding hazardous animals, run of the mill stuff you would expect from this type of platformer. 

Game is overall pretty good, from what I remember Sly 2 still is my favorite but I am really curious how it holds up in a replay 7 years later. Enjoyed my time in a revisit with Sly 1, game still holds up strong! 

Yeah I think 2 was the best. I believe 3 did the mistake about adding two many new people.

Apr 22, 2022 13:07:59 GMT X-zero said:

Apr 20, 2022 1:08:56 GMT Blindy said:

So it feels like every year there's a platforming series that I do a dive into, usually a replay. I did the DKC Trilogy few years ago, did a Jak 1-3, and Jak Racing for a year, did the Crash Trilogy and Spyro trilogy. Last year, I dominated this thread with a visit for (most) of the Ratchet & Clank series in anticipating for the awesome R&C: Rift Apart that came out last year. And I went to town on the Mega Man series, both the originals outside of MM11 and X1-5(Not sure I ever touch X6 & X7, not feeling brave) This year's flavor of the Spring/summer?



Yes Sly Cooper, Sucker Punch who are best known for the InFamous series & Ghost of Tsushima  got their first break with Sony as a first party with this series. Having played all 4 of these games about 7 years ago(Had to look it up!), I had been itching to do a revisit to this series for quite some time so I said why not? The gameplan is to tackle one game of the series each month with April belonging to Sly Cooper & The Thievius Raccoonus, May going to Sly 2: Band of Thieves, June giving way to Sly 3: Honour Among Thieves and July capping it off with Sly: Thieves in Time. 

Going back to the 1st game, one of my instant regrets was not getting the platinum which in hindsight...........is a pretty easy ask. You don't need to do any time trials or anything of that nature, you just need to finish the game and get all the collectibles. On his revisit, there was no doubt.....I was capturing what long evaded me. 

Despite being a game from the 2000's, this game still holds up really well. The story and cel shaded design still hold up so well, even if the voice acting in the beginning of the game feels a touch wooden(The game comes along nicely later on and the rest of the series it is really good). The story is simple, you play a racoon thief by the name of Sly Cooper. Think of him as the platformer's answer to Lupin the 3rd, yes he steals but he is good hearted. He comes from a long line of ancestors who were master thieves of their timeline so as such, he has a standard to meet and is attempting to reclaim the very book that consists of all of his ancestors secrets and history: The Thievius Racoonus(Hence the title of the game). Cooper is accompanied by a nerdy turtle who is the "Brains" of the crew, named Bentley who has a very Harry Carey(Long time Cubs announcer) sounding voice and is pretty snarky but means well. He gives intel consistently to Sly Cooper to help him out during his consistent rendezvous all around the world. There's also the "Muscle" of the group in the loveable Murray, a giant clumsy hippo who is super strong and also a great van driver and serves as the getaway driver of the crew along with the aforementioned braun. There's also their enemy in Carmelita Montoya Fox, a female fox who plays inspector(Think of her as a more attractive Inspector Zenigata from Lupin the 3rd) who while she tracks down the heroes, she still tries to capture them since they are criminals who are stealing, even if it's from the rich(Robin Hood much?). She is still good but her and Sly Cooper represent a Ying/Yang sort of relationship where the two respect each other but one being with the police and the other being a criminal, their paths cross and both are enemies all the while. 

The story of Sly 1 goes that Sly Cooper lost his parents because of the antagonists of the game, The Fiendish Five targeting to kill the Cooper thief lineage while trying to recover the aforementioned Thievius Racoonus book, believing that the power of these thieves lie in the book. This made Sly Cooper with the death of his mother & father an orphan, where he met Bentley and Murray in the same orphanage and the three developed a brotherly comradery to make it big and etch themselves as rags to riches success stories, even if they are going by the way of pillaging. Sly Cooper crosses paths throughout this game with the same five who murdered his parents as he attempts to reclaim the lost pages and book that mean everything to his family. It's a simple story but the voice acting of the series is done pretty well and the comic book cutscenes do this game well. The cel shaded graphics also look well, you either love or hate the design admittedly....I fall in the former category. 

The gameplay is your standard PS2 3D platformer, only this game focuses more upon the tricks of the trade you pick up from your ancestors by collecting clue bottles that serve as the collectibles of the game. There can be anywhere from 30 to 40 per area and collecting each of these allow you to unlock a giant safe in each level that if opened via a code provided by Bentley due to the full completion of clue bottles, gives you a page of the book that allows you to learn a new ability during your adventure. We're talking a dive bomb, a roll, a mine throw, super slow-mo and superspeed among other cool tricks. Admittedly, the game is a little unresponsive with some controls such as the grab command when trying to hang onto hooks to swing from platform to platform and the combat segments are pretty lackluster, you can't just swing wildly vs the opposition. Very minor nitpicking admittedly though because the game still runs smooth even on PS3 emulation! 

Game length is rather short, I got the illustrious platinum and beat the game within 3 sittings. This game probably runs you around 8 hours or so give or take. Each level is consisted of one pseudo open world portion followed by either a short level or minigames. The minigames are hit and miss admittedly with this game. They can be anything from racing to rail shooting to collecting items in a certain amount of time while avoiding hazardous animals, run of the mill stuff you would expect from this type of platformer. 

Game is overall pretty good, from what I remember Sly 2 still is my favorite but I am really curious how it holds up in a replay 7 years later. Enjoyed my time in a revisit with Sly 1, game still holds up strong! 

Yeah I think 2 was the best. I believe 3 did the mistake about adding two many new people.

3 does introduce 3 or so new people. I am fine with Carmelita getting more involved since she's a staple of the series and of course MAH GUY DIMITRI absolutely shines in Sly 3(Will get to him next month, he's a riot) and the Panda King makes his return joining the good guys and that

SPOILER: Click to show

no good backstabbing mouse bitch Penelope

and I get the forced playthrough of Murray, Bentley and the other three and how it turns some off. The game IIRC gives a very Ocean's sort of vibe to it with the cast of characters all serving a purpose to help Sly Cooper out.

I think Sly 2 did it right with the amount of the cast, Sly 4 sort of goes back to it's old roots. 

I couldn't remember exactly since I played the collection so they blend a little for me. But it looks like they went from 3 to 8 playable characters. And usually some of them have some boring mechanic that they don't want to give the main character.

I first remember hating that in Sonic Adventure especially Big the Cat.

Apr 23, 2022 22:20:06 GMT X-zero said:

I couldn't remember exactly since I played the collection so they blend a little for me. But it looks like they went from 3 to 8 playable characters. And usually some of them have some boring mechanic that they don't want to give the main character.

I first remember hating that in Sonic Adventure especially Big the Cat.

Yeah it became a minigame bonanza in Sly 3 with the scuba diving and hacking games IIRC. I get why that became frustrating, curious how I feel on my 2nd playthrough of the series. 

well X-zero , the time has come and I finished Sly 2: Band of Thieves as part of the Sly Trilogy Collection...........and the game still holds up solidly. I was admittedly worried that after the 2nd & 3rd areas that the game would not but to Sly 2's credit, the game picks up some steam later on. Don't get me wrong, there are some blemishes that have not aged well at all which I will get into but I feel the game has more meat on the bone vs Sly 1 and the voice acting is just done better in comparison.

The biggest change from Sly 1 to Sly 2 is that instead of just playing as Sly Cooper, you now control Bentley the genius Turtle & Murray the strong-style hippo who is the go to driver of the gang. We aren't talking about 1-2 missions, no they have their own exclusive missions that are mandatory towards completing the game. Sly is still the same old sneaking around, pickpocketing guards for keys and navigating through obstacles towards an objective but the two comrades have different playstyles which adds to the freshness this game feels when doing missions for each protagonist. Bentley is as you'd imagine, a hacker so he has minigames catered to what he would normally do. Despite limitations versus say Sly Cooper when it comes to navigating around place to place, where Bentley shines are these old retro 70's inspired shumps that are rather fun to play. He also has some missions that feel sort of like Sly with lazer jumping or using escape room like tricks to beat a mission(or boss!). Murray given he's the brawler of the gang would have missions that have him do less sneaking and more combat with groups of enemies in an area. He also has capabilities of throwing Bentley place to place on certain missions as well as opening doors or hard to move objects that lets you know he's the brauns of the trio. I think the series in retrospect is best with the 3 characters as it gives a sort of uniqueness mission by mission that the 1st Sly Cooper, despite being much more linear, sort of defaulted you into only playing with Sly Cooper vs say everyone else. Sly and Bentley from a character perspective haven't changed at all but Murray in Sly 2 feels like much more of a character vs say the ditzy, bumbling sidekick that he was in Sly 1.

Another returning character to the fray is Carmelita who if you play this game straight after Sly 1, you will notice something drastically has changed in regards to her. Yes, she went from a fairly heavy Spanish accent in Sly 1 to that accent being completely gone in Sly 2 and sounding nothing like she did in the 1st entry. I think this is due to the voice actress changing each time but altogether, this is a bit of a silly joke that Carmelita changes her voice in all 4 of the games with no real explanation behind it in the game. She is still the same character that she was in Sly 1 but due to the presence of the antagonists in this game, she feels like she takes a bit of a backseat as far as importance goes. We're talking her maybe showing up in one mission per chapter in Band of Thieves.

Speaking of the story and dialogue, it is still terrific and nothing too over the top. The voice acting felt a little wooden early on in Sly 1 but I felt none of that in Sly 2, maybe the biggest thing that changed with the sequel vs its predecessor. What has always made the Sly Cooper series so good was in fact the dialogue among characters, it's clever and again gives you a true feel like this is a cartoon series which is a good compliment in the writing from Sucker Punch, the studio behind this series. The story still revolves around the major antagonist of Sly 1, Clockwerk who was an archenemy of the Cooper family, only due to the events of Sly 1, Clockwerk...or rather his metal body parts are essentially out of service. What this means is there's an group of antagonists known as the "Klaww Gang" who for their own selfish purposes, want to utilize the state of the art body parts as means to better themselves financially or from a stability standpoint, not knowing the risk that is involved by using these parts. In addition to this, you have a new character who is from INTERPOL(Carmelita's police force) named Constable Nayla who serves as another authority figure of the game but finds herself sometimes working for the Sly Cooper gang in their attempts to steal back the Clockwerk parts to avoid a completely disaster for the rest of the world. One of my personal favorite characters of the series gets introduced in this game in Dimitri as a villain but as you'd expect, the antagonists are full of color and just as hilarious too. You have the French socialite Dimitri (who is an iguana and is hilarious), the Indian spice lord Rajan who is a tiger, the psychotherapist extraordinaire Contessa who is a spider, Jean Bison who is a 1800's pioneer who got frozen and is stuck in a century that he doesn't belong in who is a bison(duh) and Arpeggio who is parrot who is considered the architect of the entire group. Much like in Sly 1, what makes this series so good are the antagonists are just as funny and it makes for great dialogue between both them and the protagonists whenever they clash.

It was an overall enjoyable game but there were a few what you would call "out of date mechanics" involved. Like, putting missions in higher up places for reasons where it was a pain in the ass to get to them with Sly Cooper but an even bigger pain in the ass to get to with the other two characters as they don't have the ability to climb up. I found myself wasting more time just trying to get to the damn spot rather than actually completing the missions sometimes, just senseless. In addition, some of the missions that I thought stunk 7 years ago upon my 1st playthrough...........wouldn't you know still stink even in 2022. The tank missions are abysmal from a control standpoint, some of the missions have shotty checkpoints where if you mess up once, you begin all over again in certain segments which got annoying.

One of the major things I ended up missing on during my 1st playthrough was the purchase of 3 abilities which cost me the platinum on my 1st visit so on this 2nd run, I ended up not spending any kind of currency that was earned throughout the story just to get those 3 to earn the 100%. I didn't end up getting all of the collectible clue bottles like I did in my 1st run, not really necessary but it is there if you want to do it. Game still has a fair amount of difficulty, and the game still has the nifty looking cel shaded graphics.

Game still stands as the best of the 4 games for me, really curious if I still end up being lukewarm about Sly 3 or if I end up liking it better than how I did back in 2015.

Bentley Krew

Jun 15, 2022 20:02:11 GMT Blindy said:

well X-zero , the time has come and I finished Sly 2: Band of Thieves as part of the Sly Trilogy Collection...........and the game still holds up solidly. I was admittedly worried that after the 2nd & 3rd areas that the game would not but to Sly 2's credit, the game picks up some steam later on. Don't get me wrong, there are some blemishes that have not aged well at all which I will get into but I feel the game has more meat on the bone vs Sly 1 and the voice acting is just done better in comparison.

The biggest change from Sly 1 to Sly 2 is that instead of just playing as Sly Cooper, you now control Bentley the genius Turtle & Murray the strong-style hippo who is the go to driver of the gang. We aren't talking about 1-2 missions, no they have their own exclusive missions that are mandatory towards completing the game. Sly is still the same old sneaking around, pickpocketing guards for keys and navigating through obstacles towards an objective but the two comrades have different playstyles which adds to the freshness this game feels when doing missions for each protagonist. Bentley is as you'd imagine, a hacker so he has minigames catered to what he would normally do. Despite limitations versus say Sly Cooper when it comes to navigating around place to place, where Bentley shines are these old retro 70's inspired shumps that are rather fun to play. He also has some missions that feel sort of like Sly with lazer jumping or using escape room like tricks to beat a mission(or boss!). Murray given he's the brawler of the gang would have missions that have him do less sneaking and more combat with groups of enemies in an area. He also has capabilities of throwing Bentley place to place on certain missions as well as opening doors or hard to move objects that lets you know he's the brauns of the trio. I think the series in retrospect is best with the 3 characters as it gives a sort of uniqueness mission by mission that the 1st Sly Cooper, despite being much more linear, sort of defaulted you into only playing with Sly Cooper vs say everyone else. Sly and Bentley from a character perspective haven't changed at all but Murray in Sly 2 feels like much more of a character vs say the ditzy, bumbling sidekick that he was in Sly 1.

Another returning character to the fray is Carmelita who if you play this game straight after Sly 1, you will notice something drastically has changed in regards to her. Yes, she went from a fairly heavy Spanish accent in Sly 1 to that accent being completely gone in Sly 2 and sounding nothing like she did in the 1st entry. I think this is due to the voice actress changing each time but altogether, this is a bit of a silly joke that Carmelita changes her voice in all 4 of the games with no real explanation behind it in the game. She is still the same character that she was in Sly 1 but due to the presence of the antagonists in this game, she feels like she takes a bit of a backseat as far as importance goes. We're talking her maybe showing up in one mission per chapter in Band of Thieves.

Speaking of the story and dialogue, it is still terrific and nothing too over the top. The voice acting felt a little wooden early on in Sly 1 but I felt none of that in Sly 2, maybe the biggest thing that changed with the sequel vs its predecessor. What has always made the Sly Cooper series so good was in fact the dialogue among characters, it's clever and again gives you a true feel like this is a cartoon series which is a good compliment in the writing from Sucker Punch, the studio behind this series. The story still revolves around the major antagonist of Sly 1, Clockwerk who was an archenemy of the Cooper family, only due to the events of Sly 1, Clockwerk...or rather his metal body parts are essentially out of service. What this means is there's an group of antagonists known as the "Klaww Gang" who for their own selfish purposes, want to utilize the state of the art body parts as means to better themselves financially or from a stability standpoint, not knowing the risk that is involved by using these parts. In addition to this, you have a new character who is from INTERPOL(Carmelita's police force) named Constable Nayla who serves as another authority figure of the game but finds herself sometimes working for the Sly Cooper gang in their attempts to steal back the Clockwerk parts to avoid a completely disaster for the rest of the world. One of my personal favorite characters of the series gets introduced in this game in Dimitri as a villain but as you'd expect, the antagonists are full of color and just as hilarious too. You have the French socialite Dimitri (who is an iguana and is hilarious), the Indian spice lord Rajan who is a tiger, the psychotherapist extraordinaire Contessa who is a spider, Jean Bison who is a 1800's pioneer who got frozen and is stuck in a century that he doesn't belong in who is a bison(duh) and Arpeggio who is parrot who is considered the architect of the entire group. Much like in Sly 1, what makes this series so good are the antagonists are just as funny and it makes for great dialogue between both them and the protagonists whenever they clash.

It was an overall enjoyable game but there were a few what you would call "out of date mechanics" involved. Like, putting missions in higher up places for reasons where it was a pain in the ass to get to them with Sly Cooper but an even bigger pain in the ass to get to with the other two characters as they don't have the ability to climb up. I found myself wasting more time just trying to get to the damn spot rather than actually completing the missions sometimes, just senseless. In addition, some of the missions that I thought stunk 7 years ago upon my 1st playthrough...........wouldn't you know still stink even in 2022. The tank missions are abysmal from a control standpoint, some of the missions have shotty checkpoints where if you mess up once, you begin all over again in certain segments which got annoying.

One of the major things I ended up missing on during my 1st playthrough was the purchase of 3 abilities which cost me the platinum on my 1st visit so on this 2nd run, I ended up not spending any kind of currency that was earned throughout the story just to get those 3 to earn the 100%. I didn't end up getting all of the collectible clue bottles like I did in my 1st run, not really necessary but it is there if you want to do it. Game still has a fair amount of difficulty, and the game still has the nifty looking cel shaded graphics.

Game still stands as the best of the 4 games for me, really curious if I still end up being lukewarm about Sly 3 or if I end up liking it better than how I did back in 2015.

Listening to all her voices back to back I think I favor the 4th one. 1st had the accent and the 2nd had the delivery. 3rd doesn't excel in either but a mix of the first. 4th did that but only better.

And going for plat on 3 will make you hate all those background character the same or more.

So I took a detour from my Sly Cooper revisit to jump into a game I had never played before in Toy Story 2 originally for the PS1. This was made possible by the recent PS Plus tier system that was introduced last week. Just out of curiosity, I wanted to see how the retro games run on a PS5, especially ones that go all the way back to the Playstation 1. That and I had heard people defend Toy Story 2 as a legitimate good game when people let out a giant "Why of all PS1 games is Toy Story 2 chosen?!?!" so I figured lets give this game a look.

And man this did not age well, at all. Toy Story 2 suffers sort of from what most PS1 platformers end up suffering from and that's uncooperative cameras and floaty controls. It becomes a serious battle trying to get the camera to stay still as your looking to see if you can make a platform jump properly. But really, I can overlook all of this as someone who grew up around these type of games of this era but man even not holding this against Toy Story 2, this was still a somewhat repetitive jankfest of a game.

Lets get some of the good out of the way first, the Toy Story............story. The game does hit on a lot of what makes the Toy Story franchise so lovable and personable for many, this game in particular recreates scenes that happened in Toy Story 2 by basing the levels you play as Buzz Lightyear(You only play as Buzz Lightyear so Woody fans stay grounded) with as you try and play through what is essentially a collect-a-thon. Each stage consists of 5 different objectives to accomplish to get a pizza token which serves as the currency/cost to progress in the story and these 5 different objectives (usually) consist of paying 50 collectable coins that are scattered throughout levels to Hamm the Piggy Bank character, doing a timed objective like collecting 5 of an item around the area, fighting the boss of the area(Will get to this in a second), and finding a hidden token scattered in each level. It sounds repetitive but it actually is a decently fun time trying to get these on paper, it's just the execution of doing so which is the issue of Toy Story 2 in a nutshell. But lets stay positive and say that this game is intended for and will be a massive hit for anyone who really likes Toy Story 2 as it offers "exclusive" cutscenes after levels that have been completed. Now, lets get the elephant out of the room, the cutscenes look absolutely terrible, they look like something pulled straight from the PS1 days in fact. Choppy, sound quality is rotten, just unpleasant to watch but the cutscenes are typical Toy Story fun so if you again like the movies, you may end up looking past the poor quality and still see something with this.

And that's about it for the good. Now the bad.......we talked about how bad this game controls and the cameras but man they stick out like a sore thumb in the worst way possible. You are basically fighting with the camera at given points when trying to see if you can make a high jump or not. This is almost Super Mario 64 levels of bad only this game doesn't have the stage level depth that SM64 at least has(And Toy Story 2 came out a little bit later). It's a very slippery type of game too where despite making a landing, you can feel Buzz Lightyear feel floaty with controls where you may end up falling off due to the sensitivity, it is something atypical of a platformer of this time(Few exceptions of course) but still prevalent nevertheless. The boss fights are a simple tank em out and shoot them with your laser or whack them with your astronaut wing suit as those are basically the lone buttons you have at your disposal alongside the usual jump/double jump/move buttons(And I guess a butt slam that's rarely needed outside of a few moments). The game looks like a PS1 type of game so unless your used to this or grew up with this or even lower your expectations, this is not a pretty game in the least. The developer, Traveler's Tales who made this game also did the player no favors by putting tokens in ridiculous platformed areas high up which also means one big fall and it's minutes worth of getting back up there to try again. This is Tick Tock Tower of Super Mario 64 levels of annoyance personally speaking to give you an idea on this, only with the terrible controls to combat against.

Which makes me so glad there's one great feature of the PS1/PS2 games on the PS5..........SAVE STATES. I admittedly used this a couple of times, mostly on the aforementioned sections of a level because the hell do I want to waste more time to try and make one jump and get screwed due to the poor controls or cameras or a trial & error judgment on a jump. Zero shame in doing this, it made the experience more all the more bearable due to this.

Altogether, a pretty lackluster game that I guess for some people, it carries a level of nostalgia that makes them remember Toy Story 2 much better than how it plays 20 or so years later. I have a tolerance level for older retro platformers but this one pushed my buttons admittedly.

That was interesting to read Blindy!

The new PS+ just launched here today (I'm playing Miles Morales now) and I was kinda interested in Toy Story 2. It's pretty low on my priority list, but I'll give it a try sooner or later (I'd probably be more interested if it had trophies added TBH).

I want to give Ape Escape a try - somehow I've never got around to playing it!

Have you played Toy Story 3? It's a lot of fun and it got fairly decent review scores at the time (mostly 7s and 8s).

The main story mode is good, but the Toy Box (which was Disney Infinity before Disney Infinity) is great. I played the game again a few months ago and it still holds up pretty well (if you keep in mind it's a 12 year old PS3 game).

I was impressed with the quality level of the game in general (considering licensed games like this have a pretty bad reputation). You even get to play as Woody in some levels!

Jun 23, 2022 21:37:38 GMT @aaron said:

That was interesting to read Blindy !

The new PS+ just launched here today (I'm playing Miles Morales now) and I was kinda interested in Toy Story 2. It's pretty low on my priority list, but I'll give it a try sooner or later (I'd probably be more interested if it had trophies added TBH).

I want to give Ape Escape a try - somehow I've never got around to playing it!

Have you played Toy Story 3? It's a lot of fun and it got fairly decent review scores at the time (mostly 7s and 8s).

The main story mode is good, but the Toy Box (which was Disney Infinity before Disney Infinity) is great. I played the game again a few months ago and it still holds up pretty well (if you keep in mind it's a 12 year old PS3 game).

I was impressed with the quality level of the game in general (considering licensed games like this have a pretty bad reputation). You even get to play as Woody in some levels!

I forgot to mention how much of a bummer it is that there's no trophy support for Toy Story 2, I even 100% the game too. Haven't played Toy Story 3! Ape Escape is another one I will try down the road courtesy of this PS Plus program. 

I got 1 week until my A.I. Somnium Files game comes via mail to me as well as the new Cuphead DLC launching soooo my other preorder is set to arrive today and it's going to be Pocky & Rocky Reshined, a pretty difficult side scrolling game(Think Mystical Ninja Goemon SNES sort of by top down view), have heard this game is ridiculously hard but man this game was screaming my name when I saw the previews. Only $30 dollars which is great, hard to justify this at full price. Game is a remake of a sequel to some obscure 1986 game of a similiar name so I feel like it should be in this thread.

That and my Nintendo Switch needs to be played.

Waiting for Pocky and Rocky Reshrined got me feeling nostalgic for the SNES (used to own the original) so I beat the first game on the original Ninja Gaiden trilogy, and boy are my thumbs tired. Like seriously, after years of analog sticks, a few hours on an old school D-Pad has my thumb feeling raw, old age gamer’s thumb. Left thumb especially feels like it was slammed in a door.

Onto the game though, I remembered it being difficult, but I got to say…I remembered not the horror of 6-2. By far the most difficult stretch of a game full of not so kind stretches, and that old school knock back is no joke. Infinitely spawning enemies over precarious jumps, and I mean literally over, you have to jump and slash at the exact perfect time over the middle or they’ll cast you helplessly to the abyss.

Still, a few hours, and a barely functional throat from yelling, later, finally dropped the final boss. But holy hell, I forgot the final boss had a third phase, I was so happy to finally drop phase two to have my victory instantly snapped away. And if you fail on the boss, no matter how many lives you have, you’re sent all the way back to 6-1, you know, the level before god damned 6-2. The one saving grace is that each phase stays dead, so you don’t have to beat all 3 in one go. Though your life only refills the first time you get to phases 2 and 3, after that, you have whatever life you made it through all of 6 with, and the last stretch before the boss is a life guzzler.

That was some old school difficulty, as in, not tough but fair, but face fuck you with cheapness until you submit or persevere. But it’s done, first time I beat it in probably 25 years. Not sure if I’ll hit 2 and 3 right away or not.

Finished Pocky & Rocky Reshrined last night on Normal mode, game is very challenging. I would say the 1st two stages have a very rough introduction to the game but by stages 3 onward, while the game is still hard and somewhat tough navigating around tons of enemies, the game is very generous still. With checkpoints after a game over, it does not become a very daunting task and I would dare say it, once I got the mechanics of the game, I was getting to the boss on 1-2 lives even!

I will say for this remaster I wish there was a bit of a tutorial or something because there was so much I didn't even know until I either read or accidentally experimented with in the game. I guess that's a typical retro game then again(I need to correct myself, this is the remaster of an SNES sequel of Pocky & Rocky!). For instance, there's a little monkey hanging around in each level, you need to sweep him(Will get to this mechanic in a second) to change him into a merchant that you can get a free powerup, anything from a 1-up to a forcefield to a max up to an invincible dog summon that you can ride on temporarily. It was a giant "Ohhhhhh I wish I knew that sooner!" sort of moment for me. Likewise, the sweep mechanic is big time. By that I mean, a parry/deflect system that can deflect back most enemy projectiles thrown at you. I had no idea about this mechanic until Stage 3 even reading up on the controls prior to starting the game. Wish I knew, as some enemies like ghosts or fireballs did not die unless you used this.

The game is very reminiscent of Mystical Ninja Goemon(SNES), at least with the top down portions of the game. This game has you take control of either a shrine protecting young woman named Pocky or her racoon companion/buddy Rocky as they find out why their friends have all gone berserk and they must calm each from whatever is haunting them. The story admittedly is all over the place and despite knowing a decent bit of Japanese mythology, you are playing this game for the gameplay over say the story. The gameplay is pretty challenging, even on normal. See there's no easy mode or even 2 player mode from the get go as the game in a strange decision has locked that under game currency or beating the regular story mode one time. In fairness, the story mode can be beaten in a few mere hours on Normal and I found myself making it a mission to try and get as far as possible to earn checkpoints so I can go in with full lives to challenge the boss. This is a top down shoot em up but as a human first say a ship and it's not a side scroller so your allowed in most cases to go back to get items that you may have passed up on as long as you didn't break said items! Definitely a game that is best explained by simply just playing! I admittedly wished after the 1st 2 stages that the game was a bit quicker with movement as you do have a dodge that leaves you vulnerable after landing it(Very necessary to dodge a giant roll or jump from a mini boss or big boss!) as I feel like a lot of the enemies outrun you, especially if and when you get swarmed. However, as aforementioned, you get used to the speed of the game by say Stage 3 so not a dealbreaker by any means gameplay wise. You get a lot in your arsenal to use to succeed in the game, you get different story based transformations of your characters that you get to use after story's end for potential future playthroughs if need be. 

The music is pretty good, the intro theme is really catchy and gives a very traditional Japanese feel and the sprites/animations are very good for a retro game. The game is admittedly kinda short with 8* stages(I put an asterisk because 2 of the 8 stages are borderline just boss fights with little to no exploration of a level) but after trying hard mode out, I think for anyone used to these type of games, that might be the more satisfying mode to play. I got to the end of Level 3 basically on hard mode after wrapping up the main story on Normal, and could grind it out if I chose to do so. You get the same amount of checkpoints as you would on Normal only you take more damage and the health increases you get after defeating each stage/boss go away once you die.....the fact they don't make you repeat the stage from start to finish makes this not seem impossible. By no means a cake walk but still not as impossible as I thought it was going to be initially.

Game runs you $30 dollars, I think it's a perfect rental or game bought on sale but even then, it's still not a bad purchase at the initial price, especially when I just know the physical version(Got this on Nintendo Switch) will probably run out of print very soon.

Jun 27, 2022 14:09:40 GMT Blindy said:

Finished Pocky & Rocky Reshrined last night on Normal mode, game is very challenging. I would say the 1st two stages have a very rough introduction to the game but by stages 3 onward, while the game is still hard and somewhat tough navigating around tons of enemies, the game is very generous still. With checkpoints after a game over, it does not become a very daunting task and I would dare say it, once I got the mechanics of the game, I was getting to the boss on 1-2 lives even!

I will say for this remaster I wish there was a bit of a tutorial or something because there was so much I didn't even know until I either read or accidentally experimented with in the game. I guess that's a typical retro game then again(I need to correct myself, this is the remaster of an SNES sequel of Pocky & Rocky!). For instance, there's a little monkey hanging around in each level, you need to sweep him(Will get to this mechanic in a second) to change him into a merchant that you can get a free powerup, anything from a 1-up to a forcefield to a max up to an invincible dog summon that you can ride on temporarily. It was a giant "Ohhhhhh I wish I knew that sooner!" sort of moment for me. Likewise, the sweep mechanic is big time. By that I mean, a parry/deflect system that can deflect back most enemy projectiles thrown at you. I had no idea about this mechanic until Stage 3 even reading up on the controls prior to starting the game. Wish I knew, as some enemies like ghosts or fireballs did not die unless you used this.

The game is very reminiscent of Mystical Ninja Goemon(SNES), at least with the top down portions of the game. This game has you take control of either a shrine protecting young woman named Pocky or her racoon companion/buddy Rocky as they find out why their friends have all gone berserk and they must calm each from whatever is haunting them. The story admittedly is all over the place and despite knowing a decent bit of Japanese mythology, you are playing this game for the gameplay over say the story. The gameplay is pretty challenging, even on normal. See there's no easy mode or even 2 player mode from the get go as the game in a strange decision has locked that under game currency or beating the regular story mode one time. In fairness, the story mode can be beaten in a few mere hours on Normal and I found myself making it a mission to try and get as far as possible to earn checkpoints so I can go in with full lives to challenge the boss. This is a top down shoot em up but as a human first say a ship and it's not a side scroller so your allowed in most cases to go back to get items that you may have passed up on as long as you didn't break said items! Definitely a game that is best explained by simply just playing! I admittedly wished after the 1st 2 stages that the game was a bit quicker with movement as you do have a dodge that leaves you vulnerable after landing it(Very necessary to dodge a giant roll or jump from a mini boss or big boss!) as I feel like a lot of the enemies outrun you, especially if and when you get swarmed. However, as aforementioned, you get used to the speed of the game by say Stage 3 so not a dealbreaker by any means gameplay wise. You get a lot in your arsenal to use to succeed in the game, you get different story based transformations of your characters that you get to use after story's end for potential future playthroughs if need be. 

The music is pretty good, the intro theme is really catchy and gives a very traditional Japanese feel and the sprites/animations are very good for a retro game. The game is admittedly kinda short with 8* stages(I put an asterisk because 2 of the 8 stages are borderline just boss fights with little to no exploration of a level) but after trying hard mode out, I think for anyone used to these type of games, that might be the more satisfying mode to play. I got to the end of Level 3 basically on hard mode after wrapping up the main story on Normal, and could grind it out if I chose to do so. You get the same amount of checkpoints as you would on Normal only you take more damage and the health increases you get after defeating each stage/boss go away once you die.....the fact they don't make you repeat the stage from start to finish makes this not seem impossible. By no means a cake walk but still not as impossible as I thought it was going to be initially.

Game runs you $30 dollars, I think it's a perfect rental or game bought on sale but even then, it's still not a bad purchase at the initial price, especially when I just know the physical version(Got this on Nintendo Switch) will probably run out of print very soon.

Pretty much the same opinion, personally wouldn't bother buying it, once you're done, not really good enough to return. Except maybe playing it how it was meant to be played with a second player, but after that, back to not much reason to return. It's a fine rental or sub-$10 buy for me.

Still fuckers for locking multiplayer, it was one my brother wanted to hit up with me, now we each just played it seperately.

Jul 2, 2022 10:41:50 GMT RagnarokMike said:

Jun 27, 2022 14:09:40 GMT Blindy said:

Finished Pocky & Rocky Reshrined last night on Normal mode, game is very challenging. I would say the 1st two stages have a very rough introduction to the game but by stages 3 onward, while the game is still hard and somewhat tough navigating around tons of enemies, the game is very generous still. With checkpoints after a game over, it does not become a very daunting task and I would dare say it, once I got the mechanics of the game, I was getting to the boss on 1-2 lives even!

I will say for this remaster I wish there was a bit of a tutorial or something because there was so much I didn't even know until I either read or accidentally experimented with in the game. I guess that's a typical retro game then again(I need to correct myself, this is the remaster of an SNES sequel of Pocky & Rocky!). For instance, there's a little monkey hanging around in each level, you need to sweep him(Will get to this mechanic in a second) to change him into a merchant that you can get a free powerup, anything from a 1-up to a forcefield to a max up to an invincible dog summon that you can ride on temporarily. It was a giant "Ohhhhhh I wish I knew that sooner!" sort of moment for me. Likewise, the sweep mechanic is big time. By that I mean, a parry/deflect system that can deflect back most enemy projectiles thrown at you. I had no idea about this mechanic until Stage 3 even reading up on the controls prior to starting the game. Wish I knew, as some enemies like ghosts or fireballs did not die unless you used this.

The game is very reminiscent of Mystical Ninja Goemon(SNES), at least with the top down portions of the game. This game has you take control of either a shrine protecting young woman named Pocky or her racoon companion/buddy Rocky as they find out why their friends have all gone berserk and they must calm each from whatever is haunting them. The story admittedly is all over the place and despite knowing a decent bit of Japanese mythology, you are playing this game for the gameplay over say the story. The gameplay is pretty challenging, even on normal. See there's no easy mode or even 2 player mode from the get go as the game in a strange decision has locked that under game currency or beating the regular story mode one time. In fairness, the story mode can be beaten in a few mere hours on Normal and I found myself making it a mission to try and get as far as possible to earn checkpoints so I can go in with full lives to challenge the boss. This is a top down shoot em up but as a human first say a ship and it's not a side scroller so your allowed in most cases to go back to get items that you may have passed up on as long as you didn't break said items! Definitely a game that is best explained by simply just playing! I admittedly wished after the 1st 2 stages that the game was a bit quicker with movement as you do have a dodge that leaves you vulnerable after landing it(Very necessary to dodge a giant roll or jump from a mini boss or big boss!) as I feel like a lot of the enemies outrun you, especially if and when you get swarmed. However, as aforementioned, you get used to the speed of the game by say Stage 3 so not a dealbreaker by any means gameplay wise. You get a lot in your arsenal to use to succeed in the game, you get different story based transformations of your characters that you get to use after story's end for potential future playthroughs if need be. 

The music is pretty good, the intro theme is really catchy and gives a very traditional Japanese feel and the sprites/animations are very good for a retro game. The game is admittedly kinda short with 8* stages(I put an asterisk because 2 of the 8 stages are borderline just boss fights with little to no exploration of a level) but after trying hard mode out, I think for anyone used to these type of games, that might be the more satisfying mode to play. I got to the end of Level 3 basically on hard mode after wrapping up the main story on Normal, and could grind it out if I chose to do so. You get the same amount of checkpoints as you would on Normal only you take more damage and the health increases you get after defeating each stage/boss go away once you die.....the fact they don't make you repeat the stage from start to finish makes this not seem impossible. By no means a cake walk but still not as impossible as I thought it was going to be initially.

Game runs you $30 dollars, I think it's a perfect rental or game bought on sale but even then, it's still not a bad purchase at the initial price, especially when I just know the physical version(Got this on Nintendo Switch) will probably run out of print very soon.

Pretty much the same opinion, personally wouldn't bother buying it, once you're done, not really good enough to return. Except maybe playing it how it was meant to be played with a second player, but after that, back to not much reason to return. It's a fine rental or sub-$10 buy for me.

Still fuckers for locking multiplayer, it was one my brother wanted to hit up with me, now we each just played it seperately.

Such an odd decision to lock that behind a 1st playthrough. Game is pretty good though and there's new characters I guess to maybe do a 2nd run through the game with. They locked 2Player and Easy Mode behind a coin system that requires you to play the main campaign for however long to even unlock it too if you aren't able to finish the main campaign on Normal difficulty. 

🤯

Lately I've been in an AKI mood and have been looking at different modding communities to look at their info. I came across this website that dives into the code of Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 and helps explain how certain aspects of the game function:

www.tapatalk.com/groups/vpw2dojo/addresses-values-and-guides-f20/

Unfortunately it's not all fleshed out but it's interesting none the less to see how the game registers moves or sets together cards.

Lately I've been playing through Road to Wrestlemania in WM2000 and jotting down notes just to see how they book together certain cards.

I'll give you an example of a card I had

RAW
Apr./1st Week

Triple Threat - Jobber Match?
CAW def. Chaz & Blue Meanie

Tag Team - Jobber Tag Match?
Edge & Gangrel def. Droz & Prince Albert

Singles - Jobber vs. Mid-Card?
Chris Jericho def. Mideon

Singles - Mid-Card?
D'Lo Brown def. Farooq

Cage - Main Event Cage Match?
The Rock def. Steve Austin

Tag - Main Event Tag Match?
The Union (Shamrock & Test) def. Supply & Demand

Triple Threat - Main Event/Upper Mid-Card Match?
Kane def. X-Pac & Road Dogg

Like VPW2, I don't think these cards are completely randomised and I think they're pre-set. I'm just trying to figure out the code and which wrestlers belong in which pool.

For instance, the mid-card Cage Match seems to be drawing from the main event pool.

At first I thought the game was simply using the default roster page (eg. Superstar 1) but if it's like VPW2 that may not be the case. In fact, judging from Jericho's position, he seems to be rated as highly as you rate him and seems to be in that jobber pool.

My theory at the moment is that...

There's a main event pool that consists of: Austin, Rock, HHH, Mankind, Show, Taker, Kane*

There's an upper-mid card pool that consists of: Mr. Ass, X-Pac, Road Dogg, Test, Shamrock, Jarrett, Bossman*

Mid-card pool: Venis, Godfather, Farooq, Bradshaw, Snow, Holly, Edge, Christian, D'Lo, Mark Henry, Gangrel*, Mideon*, Viscera*

Jobbers: The Hardy Boyz, Blackman, Jericho, Too Hot, Droz, Albert, Chaz, Meat, Meanie,

Guest (only appear on PPV or WWF Championship defences): McMahons, Chyna, Patterson, Brisco, Dok Hendrix, Lawler

Anyone with an asterix could be lower.

Tag teams have their own pool as well. I always dug the tag division in WM2000 and was disappointed it wasn't close to reality

Group 1
Austin/Rock
Brothers of Destruction
HHH/Ass
The Union (Mankind/Show)
The Union (Test/Shamrock)
D-X (Dogg/Pac)
Supply and Demand
Bossman/Jarrett (I guess filling in for Owen?)
Brown/Henry
The Acolytes

Group 2
The Hardy Boyz
JOB Squad (Holly/Snow)
The Brood (Gangrel/Edge)
The Ministry (Mideon/Viscera)
Droz/Albert
The Headbangers
Too Hot
Meanie Meat

Guest
Dude Love & Cactus Jack
The McMahons
The Stooges

Like I said I've been playing along and recording results as I go along. I've just completed King of the Ring, which is about 12 weeks into the season. I think 8 weeks in I got a push and started getting booked against Snow, The Acolytes, Vince and Briscoe before winning KOTR and getting a shot at the Hardcore title.

I really need to find a way to look at the code, the addresses and try to get all the different templates. I'd also love to pull the game apart just to know how powerful certain moves are etc.

Sept 10, 2022 18:41:57 GMT Big Pete said:

🤯

Lately I've been in an AKI mood and have been looking at different modding communities to look at their info. I came across this website that dives into the code of Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 and helps explain how certain aspects of the game function:

www.tapatalk.com/groups/vpw2dojo/addresses-values-and-guides-f20/

Unfortunately it's not all fleshed out but it's interesting none the less to see how the game registers moves or sets together cards.

Lately I've been playing through Road to Wrestlemania in WM2000 and jotting down notes just to see how they book together certain cards.

I'll give you an example of a card I had

RAW
Apr./1st Week

Triple Threat - Jobber Match?
CAW def. Chaz & Blue Meanie

Tag Team - Jobber Tag Match?
Edge & Gangrel def. Droz & Prince Albert

Singles - Jobber vs. Mid-Card?
Chris Jericho def. Mideon

Singles - Mid-Card?
D'Lo Brown def. Farooq

Cage - Main Event Cage Match?
The Rock def. Steve Austin

Tag - Main Event Tag Match?
The Union (Shamrock & Test) def. Supply & Demand

Triple Threat - Main Event/Upper Mid-Card Match?
Kane def. X-Pac & Road Dogg

Like VPW2, I don't think these cards are completely randomised and I think they're pre-set. I'm just trying to figure out the code and which wrestlers belong in which pool.

For instance, the mid-card Cage Match seems to be drawing from the main event pool.

At first I thought the game was simply using the default roster page (eg. Superstar 1) but if it's like VPW2 that may not be the case. In fact, judging from Jericho's position, he seems to be rated as highly as you rate him and seems to be in that jobber pool.

My theory at the moment is that...

There's a main event pool that consists of: Austin, Rock, HHH, Mankind, Show, Taker, Kane*

There's an upper-mid card pool that consists of: Mr. Ass, X-Pac, Road Dogg, Test, Shamrock, Jarrett, Bossman*

Mid-card pool: Venis, Godfather, Farooq, Bradshaw, Snow, Holly, Edge, Christian, D'Lo, Mark Henry, Gangrel*, Mideon*, Viscera*

Jobbers: The Hardy Boyz, Blackman, Jericho, Too Hot, Droz, Albert, Chaz, Meat, Meanie,

Guest (only appear on PPV or WWF Championship defences): McMahons, Chyna, Patterson, Brisco, Dok Hendrix, Lawler

Anyone with an asterix could be lower.

Tag teams have their own pool as well. I always dug the tag division in WM2000 and was disappointed it wasn't close to reality

Group 1
Austin/Rock
Brothers of Destruction
HHH/Ass
The Union (Mankind/Show)
The Union (Test/Shamrock)
D-X (Dogg/Pac)
Supply and Demand
Bossman/Jarrett (I guess filling in for Owen?)
Brown/Henry
The Acolytes

Group 2
The Hardy Boyz
JOB Squad (Holly/Snow)
The Brood (Gangrel/Edge)
The Ministry (Mideon/Viscera)
Droz/Albert
The Headbangers
Too Hot
Meanie Meat

Guest
Dude Love & Cactus Jack
The McMahons
The Stooges

Like I said I've been playing along and recording results as I go along. I've just completed King of the Ring, which is about 12 weeks into the season. I think 8 weeks in I got a push and started getting booked against Snow, The Acolytes, Vince and Briscoe before winning KOTR and getting a shot at the Hardcore title.

I really need to find a way to look at the code, the addresses and try to get all the different templates. I'd also love to pull the game apart just to know how powerful certain moves are etc.

This is fucking awesome.

Alright, I've been doing some more digging today. This site: vpw.ajworld.net/ has some fantastic resources, not just on WM2000 but the entire AKI catalogue and digging through their resources, it's easy to see how the groups are divided and who is in what category.

Group 1 (Main Event): Austin (WWF), Taker, Rock, HHH, Mankind, Show, Shamrock, Test, Gunn, Road Dogg, X-Pac, Kane.

Group 2 (Mid-Card): Bossman, Venis, Godfather, Farooq, Bradshaw, Jarrett (IC), D'Lo, Henry, Edge, Gangrel

Group 3 (Low Mid-Card): Snow (Hardcore), Bobcore, Christian, Viscera, Mideon (Euro), Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy (tag),Jericho

Group 4 (Jobbers): Blackman, Droz, Albert, Meat, Thrasher, Chaz, Meanie, Christopher, Taylor

Group 5 (Guest): Vince, Shane, HBK, Cactus, Dude, Chyna, Patterson, Brisco, Hayes,Lawler

When you select a season with two CAWs, you replace Too Hot. Otherwise everyone gets bumped up two places from where you take your guys.

Interestingly, title contendership appear to have their own separate rankings. For instance, despite being in main event tier, Pac will exclusively challenge for the Euro title. I believe titles have a maximum of 7 challengers, with the WWF title having 5 potential challengers (Rock, Taker, HHH, Mankind, Show). At least I think HHH is in there, I never actually saw him challenge.

So far I've discovered the game runs at least 23 templates and they're all designed around one gimmick. For instance, if the Euro title is defended there's 3 (maybe 4) templates the game will pick from. You'll notice these cards have a distinct pattern and can be replicated with the same grouped wrestlers facing off on the exact same spot on the card. Unlike VPW2 I've never seen any mixing of two groups unless there's a title match and that's a completely separate pool. That card I posted up earlier, is what I consider Cage Match #1 and there's 3 other different templates the game will draw from but that's a pretty consistent template.

Every two months, the game will promote/relegate two wrestlers from each group based on win percentages. So the reason why I thought Jericho was in the lowest group was because in my save, my guy was promoted over him on the road to King of the Ring.

The interesting thing from the first link I posted was that limb damage also affects a wrestler's ability to perform damage. Say you use a chokeslam that relies on arm strength, if your arms have been targeted you may only register 50% attack. Specials supposedly were unaffected I guess to reflect wrestler spirit.

Since I'm more familiar with No Mercy, I've been toying around how the different tiers would have looked there. I think the order of faces is pretty consistent guide with Tier 1 comprising of DX and the Radicalz alongside the obvious main eventers. Tier 2 has Tazz, Test, Shamrock etc. along with all the TLC era tag teams.

When it comes to soundtrack, I think WM2000 goes neck and neck with Revenge. I think WM2000 had the best menu music of all the games - Panter's Psycho Holiday and of course this for CAW: except they remixed it with a flute solo and made it really laidback. I always thought that was one drawback, I can live with dig diggity dog, but it just doesn't hold a candle to Pantera, Big L and Steve Vai.

Big Pete, I'm fucking loving these deep dives.

I'm still working on decompiling the AKI games, I need to do more research because the addresses seem off-base.

In the mean time, I played around with the PC port of Ocarina of Time. It's still the same ol' OoT experience just with 60 FPS, higher res and a bunch of QOL improvements that make it a smoother experience. It'll be nice to return to every six months time to see what mods get added.

Also had a power outage so I picked up the Switch and played a session of Earthbound. I spent it largely focusing on the gameplay because my memory is that the game had some bizarre difficulty curves. One second you could be going a long getting pecked by crows and then moments later you're getting stabbed to death by mobsters. Turns out your dad puts money into your ATM for every enemy you kill, so you have to grind up early for equipment. You also have to go into your secret clubhouse for a cap and that makes life easier.

Played through to the point where you have to beat up the police to open up the blockade into the next town.

I had heard that retro gaming has gotten expensive now but goddamn, this is insane.

I still have an original Playstation so I wanted to play the OG Silent Hill as I played it a friends house as a child and it gave me nightmares (this was long before I became a horror fan) and every copy I come across is around this price tag:

Oct 26, 2022 15:10:21 GMT System said:

I had heard that retro gaming has gotten expensive now but goddamn, this is insane.

I still have an original Playstation so I wanted to play the OG Silent Hill as I played it a friends house as a child and it gave me nightmares (this was long before I became a horror fan) and every copy I come across is around this price tag:

As somebody who has been watching it explode over the last 11 years it is fucking crazy. I sold off probably 75% of my collection back in 2011 for a small tiny fraction of what I would have made today. I did manage to keep a small fortune in Sega Saturn games those have been the ones to rocket in price

Can't see your image System but the original Silent Hill is a notoriously rare and expensive game. Only Legend of Dragoon and Symphony of the Night are rarer to my knowledge. Most other PS1 games are pretty cheap, ditto for PS2 and the rest of the Silent Hill series.

The rarest game I have is probably Vagrant Story, see prices ranging from £30 to over £100 online.

My rarest is Rule of Rose. There are currently only three copies on UK eBay - a sealed one for £1k and two unsealed listings for £700 and £600.

The most recent sold one went for £480 so that's nice!