Gaming off the Beaten Path

Welcome Claire! Consider the area you're in a...special playground I have prepared just for you. Please try and keep me amused, and do not disappoint me by dying too soon! Halloween is here, so that means it's time to get spooky once again. It's been a while, but we're finally getting back to Resident Evil. I am not a huge fan of horror in general, but Resident Evil is one of my all-time favorite gaming franchises. It has the third most games in my personal top 100, behind only Mega Man and Final Fantasy, and is tied with FF for the most games on my 10s list (three apiece, for the record). Last year, I reviewed the absolutely incredible Gamecube remake on Halloween. Maybe next year I'll review Resident Evil 4, another 10/10 that just recently received a big budget remake. Both of those are all time classics, they are not only personal favorites but also important touchstones in the gaming industry as a whole. But, as great as they are, as revolutionary as they were,...

You know, for all the racing games I've covered over the years, I think last week was the first time I ever played a simulation racing game. This week I'm going to re-visit another genre I haven't touched in a while: arcade sports titles. Arcade sports games are a love it or hate it kind of thing. In some respect, it's difficult to pin down what exactly an arcade sports title entails. At its most basic level, it's a sports game that isn't a simulation of the sport it represents. But I personally would take it a bit further. It's any sports game that doesn't even attempt to simulate the sport it represents. Obviously, RBI Baseball on the NES isn't anything close to a simulation by modern standards, but it was the best they could do at the time. Would you consider that sim style or arcade style? At any rate, I think it's safe to include any over the top, ridiculous sports titles in the arcade side of things. Games like NFL Blitz and NBA Jam are som...

  For the first time, I'm going to have to put an asterisk on a review. Yeah I know, even at the beginning of the review I know its going to have to happen. It's just going to have to. I know Sega fans really love Jet Grind Radio (called Jet Set Radio outside the US) and its generally pretty well regarded for a variety of reasons. But here's the thing you have to remember when you are reviewing media; reviewers are looking at both objective and subjective aspects. When it comes to video games, that means you are looking at things like control and graphics as well as fun factor. However, I've always felt things always leaned more on the subjective. Sure, some games have outright bad controls, but sometimes they have a bit of a subjective component as well. Some people hate tank controls, others don't mind them. Sometimes, a game can be objectively strong, but a reviewer can find it subjectively bad (as I did with Star Fox Adventures ). Other times, a game can make up...

  You know, I'm glad they included "racing" in the title. It's kind of a subtitle on the case and disc, so when I saw just "Mag Force" I thought I was about to play some sort of shooting game. But instead we have a racing game, a futuristic racer originally published in 1999 by Crave. For those that may not remember, Crave was also the publisher responsible for the first game I reviewed on GOTBP, Shadow Madness. But we can't really use that for comparison, a traditional RPG and a futuristic racing game are about as far apart as two games can be. In doing some research, the most similar game I found was something called Killer Loop, it's also a futuristic racer, also published by Crave and also released in 1999. It's almost like it's the same game. Wait a minute...it's not almost the same game. It IS the same game. For whatever reason, they decided to change the name for the Dreamcast version of the game. It's Killer Loop on the PS1 a...

 It's been a busy week, so I decided to go back to fighting games. I also haven't done a Dreamcast game in a while, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. I'm not sure I would consider Dead or Alive to be that obscure a fighting game franchise. When I covered Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, I thought a lot about "tier levels" of fighting game popularity and how all of the series' would rank (strictly based on popularity here, not quality). SF and MK would obviously be at the top, but what about all the dozens of other franchises? Maybe that's a discussion for a different day, but today we are talking specifically about DOA, a series I would put towards the upper middle of that tier list. It definitely can't touch the big two, it's certainly not on the level of stuff like Tekken or even Virtua Fighter, though I would put it in the category below those. While the original came out for the PS1 and the second was an early title in the ...

 Sometimes, combinations just don't work out, even if that combination involves two things that are independently awesome. Think about it like this: peanut butter is awesome and so are tacos. I really like both of those things individually. But if you mix those two things together, you are going to create a disgusting, mismatched monstrosity. They might even pair well with other things, but not with each other. Peanut butter is great on its own or with chocolate, tacos are great on their own, but mixing them together is a terrible idea (unless you are talking about choco-tacos, in which case, mix away!). Star Wars Demolition should be one of those winning combinations. Vehicular combat games are cool and so is Star Wars. Vehicular combat games were popular when it was released in 2000 for the Dreamcast and PS1, with titles like Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal leading the charge, while Star Wars had vaulted back into the cultural Zeitgeist with the 1999 release of "Episode 1: The...

Time to check another console off the list. With the official launch of the new generation (I think this would be 9th Gen?), it's safe to assume a lot of folks out there will be getting new gaming consoles for the holidays this year. I know I did! So, did I pick up a PS5, or did I go with an XBox? Neither. I got a Sega Dreamcast for Christmas this year. I've been after one of these for a long time and thanks in no small part to my wife, I've finally got one. It even came with a bunch of games, running the gamut from console mainstays to obscure outliers. I should also mention that while I've never owned a Dreamcast before now, I do have a lot more familiarity with it than I do other Sega consoles. I've certainly played more of it than the Saturn and I would even say I put more time on it than I did the Genesis. I've played a lot of the heavy hitters here, Sonic Adventure, Soul Caliber, etc. A lot of these titles were also ported to other consoles, I covered Gran...

 Last week I discussed Grandia II and its solid-but-uneven story, well written-but-tropetastic cast and well presented-but-uninspired style.  That's a lot of hyphens and not a lot about actual gameplay. Let's get started with something positive.  Grandia II absolutely nails one of an RPG's most important elements: the combat system.  It's a bit difficult to explain so bear with me here.  You enter (random) encounters with a party of four.  Each party member and enemy combatant are denoted on a scrolling bar, called the IP gauge, at the bottom of the screen.  When it gets to the command section, its time to input your command.  Each party member can use a combo or critical attack, special move, magic attack, evade, defend, use items or change their equipment.  Enter your command and the IP gauge will scroll through its last section, the command section.  If it reaches the end, your character will perform their attack.  The same is tr...