Gaming off the Beaten Path

Looking back at my last couple of posts, I realize I have been neglecting the PS2/GameCube/XBox generation.  It’s strange, because I probably have more PS2 games than anything, seeing as I had a lot of disposable income and time when they were at the end of its lifespan.  I bought a lot of $10 games in those days.   And apparently, Guilty Gear X2 was one of those games.  Released in 2003, its the third in a series of fighting games that date back to 1998.  While the game has its share of sequels, with the most recent coming in 2015, it isn’t exactly a mainstream series.  If I were asked to name fighting game series’ I’d go a long way before I got to Guilty Gear.  But is it any good? I will start with two elements of the game, one very bad and one very good, that stood out the most.  Essentially, they will cancel each other out in my evaluation. First, the bad.  Anime.  Remember the Cosmic Star Heroine re...

Moving away from the 16-bit era, its time once again to discuss a PS1 era RPG. It’s no secret that there were tons of these on the PlayStation and while many of them are considered all time classics, many more have fallen into obscurity. The Granstream Saga definitely falls into the latter category. What we have here is an action RPG released towards the middle of the systems life-cycle that was intended as a spiritual successor to Japan-only Super Nintendo (well, Super Famicom) game Terranigma. Thanks to the wonders of emulation and fan translations, Terranigma has established itself as a cult classic in the West. It’s pseudo-sequel, despite having actually been released in the U.S., is still just a footnote. Starting with the story, you play as a young man named Eon, who is responsible for cutting pieces off of his home continent to help it float. The surface of Eon’s world is covered in water, with what’s left of humanity living on a series of four floating continen...

So I decided to go with back to back SNES games.  I have been in a 16-bit kind of mood and don’t currently have easy access to a Genesis, so here we are.  What can I say, it was a great generation in gaming. Of course, each generation has its quirks.  They all seem to cater to one genre more than the others.  In the current gen, its open world adventure games.  In the 32-bit era, it was RPGs.  In the early 90s, it was mascot platformers. These things were everywhere, mostly because everyone was trying to replicate the success of Mario and Sonic.  The official mascots of Nintendo and Sega appeared in tons of games, ranging from good to all time classics.  It may be hard to believe with some of the Sonic games out there now, but there was a time where the blue blur could do no wrong.  It seems Mario still can’t. Of course, that also meant imitators.  It seems like everyone was cranking out games with g...

Eye of the Beholder   Here’s the thing about bad games, they aren’t all necessarily bad.   Wait, what?  Did I just type that?  It may sound like it doesn’t make sense, but its true.  A lot of different things can make a game good or bad and not everyone agrees on what is most important.  Sometimes games are bad overall, other times they have one glaring flaw.  Add in the fact that rating games is as subjective as it is objective and you can see what I mean.   Eye of the Beholder should be a good game.  It has good graphics, solid sound and an interesting premise.  You build out a team of four characters to take on a sewer full of baddies on a mission to destroy the city. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons game, so it follows the rules of that universe.  I have never been a huge D&D fan, but it’s still nice to see.    It’s a unique game unlike anything else on the SNES.  It’s difficult ...

So I just bought a car.  I may not be the first one of my friends to own a minivan, but I'm damn sure the first one to own a minivan of my own free will!  I figured now was a good time to check another genre off the list.  One I have been dreading for a long time.   I really, really don’t like racing games.  At least, realistic ones.  I like my share of kart racers and more sci-if oriented racers, like F-Zero, but that’s about it.  I have just never been a car enthusiast (I just bought a minivan for crying out loud) and I can count on one hand the ones I think are actually fun.  Everyone always talks about Gran Turismo or Forza or whatever, how they accurately simulate driving.  Great!  Who doesn’t love driving!  While we're at it, lets make games that accurately simulate squirting lemon juice in your eye or getting kicked in the nuts!    So as it is, there’s some genre bias here, but I am always...

Cosmic Star Heroine Once again, I am taking a detour from old school gaming to more modern fare.  Well, sort of.   Cosmic Star Heroine may have come out relatively recently, but it has old school RPG written all over it.  From the pixel art to the narrative to the style and atmosphere, this looks exactly like something that would have came out on the SNES in 1995.  It plays like it too, which is a very, very good thing.   Make no mistake about it, CSH is a very, very flawed game.  Much of it is simply a function of it being a kickstarter funded indie game designed by a small team.  Making a video game is hard work and you can’t expect the same level of perfection you can from a developer that has a 1,000+ man team.  Some of the flaws were design based and there is room for improvement, but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to see more games like this. The story puts you in the shoes of Alyssa La’Salle, o...

Spring is finally here!  Of course, that means baseball is back, so I figured its time to take a look back at the All-Star Baseball Series. As I discussed in my Gameday review, football games always sort of had “top franchise” that was regarded as being better than its competitors.  First it was the Tecmo Bowl series, then Gameday and now Madden is the only game in town.  The history of baseball games is a little more convoluted.  There were tons of these things, but they always seemed to be an afterthought.  Even sports giant EA’s baseball series, Triple Play, was considered a laughing stock by many.   I should also note that I do have a little bit of genre bias here.  While there are fun football games across generations of gaming (seriously, check out Super Challenge Football for the Atari 2600) I find any baseball game that came out before the 32/64-bit era to be unplayable.  Yes, that includes the much-loved Ken...