I’m kind of resolved to not really being excited by the current generation of electronic game hardware, and my time to play WoW disappeared a couple of years ago when I started my current job. So I’ve been slowly catching up on cheapo PS2 games over the past year or so. And here is a post about that.
GTA Vice City Stories
First things first, what a horrible port. I don’t know if the PSP version was this buggy, but until the second island is unlocked this game froze fatally for me many times. You’d be driving at top speed, turn a corner and the entire world would grind to halt.
Secondly, while the protagonist is probably the most pleasant of these games, the NPCs are far more repellent, being plain nasty rather than comically nasty. Once familiar faces start showing up the tone lightens, but good grief some of those early missions and cut scenes are depressing.
On the plus side there’s some nice gameplay improvements with a much expanded hand to hand combat system, options to rebuy your lost equipment in one lump sum, and at the core of the game a crime empire management game. And bar the final mission, there’s no unforgiving missions to stall your fun.
Once I got over the twin speed bumps of bugs and obnoxiousness, it was fun game to play with the usual mix of free thinking sandbox missions and OTT set pieces (the highpoint being the Phil Collins concert).
Dynasty Warriors 3
I’m a big fan of games that involve pressing buttons or mice a lot to kill a lot of enemies. So I don’t know why I had put off playing one of KOEI’s Romance of the 3 Kingdoms-based historical hack-a-thons for so long.
It’s a bit daunting when you start the first level and it tells you that you have one and a half hours to finish the level. ONE AND A HALF HOURS! I’d not sat and played a game for more than a hour in ages. And now I was expected to rapidly hit buttons for 90 minutes? Well it wasn’t quite that bad, but I have to admit it took me a while to work out how best to progress in the campaign/musou mode (namely level up the character before pushing on to the next level). But soon I was obsessed with unlocking characters, weapons, items and battles. Yes it does suffer from popup and slow down on some of the more insane battlefields, but ploughing through 10s of soldiers with your gaudily dressed general as he propels them flying with some kind of polearm, has a visceral thrill that only this “Gauntlet as wargame” franchise can give.