Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@RogerRoger Cheers, I’ve been working on it off and on and the World Cup 2002 review should be up soon! It takes longer than I thought to play a whole season 😂

@nessisonett Well-written piece! Granted, most of it is wasted on me, since I know as much about soccer as I do about Martian square dancing rituals, but it was an enjoyable read nonetheless, since you infused it with your own personality and voice.

It's heart-warming to see someone play these ancient sports games, btw, which seem so disposable and unloved.

@Ralizah Hahaha, I know that it’s a bit of a niche topic on a site like this but it’s been fun taking a look back at these games. Thanks for reading and there’s more to come!

Quoted for truth. Whenever I see somebody describing videogames as "products" I think of FIFA. So many of these annual sports games became irrelevant as soon as they were released, as everybody immediately started discussing what the next one would change. It's nice seeing @nessisonett go back and actually play them, and analyse their gameplay mechanics, to find the good that they achieved.

Bonus review time! With the 2002 World Cup on the horizon, EA Canada, of SSX fame, led a team of two other studios to develop a game based on the forthcoming tournament. The first of these was Software Creations, known for the many cult classics developed by the Follin brothers such as Silver Surfer, Ken Griffey Jr’s MLB, and Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage. The second studio was Intelligent Games, known for rather less classic titles like Lego Stunt Rally and Tweenies: Game Time. So does this game justify this trio of eclectic developers? It’s hard to say.

Presentation-wise, the game opens with a fittingly epic intro full of pomp and bombast. This, and the whole game in fact, is accompanied by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, which gives it more of a Quidditch World Cup vibe than the real World Cup. Not enough drunk English fans slurring their way through Sweet Caroline. The graphics are largely unchanged from FIFA 2002, although the World Cup stylings throughout the menu and match intros bump it up a notch.

In terms of gameplay… well it’s odd. While controls are identical to FIFA 2002, the faster pace and steep learning curve feel more like the later FIFA 2003. The power bar’s issues remain as well, with the same miniscule difference between the ball trickling across the grass and the ball flying directly into some poor sop in Row G’s nachos. I’m not convinced that you can ever really get to grips with the gameplay on higher difficulties (I played on Professional difficulty, the second highest).

Before we get into Scotland’s shot at glory, a quick aside about the tournament in question. The 2002 Japan/Korea World Cup was one of the most controversial in history. Refereeing in particular was questionable at best, utterly corrupt at worst. Take the Ecuadorian referee Byron Moreno for example, who officiated the South Korea v Italy match. He completely ignored several violent actions from South Korean players while sending off Francesco Totti for a dive despite being about 40 yards away. This is the same man who was caught and jailed after smuggling 6 kilograms of heroin through JFK Airport in his underwear. To say it was one hell of a strange tournament is an understatement. However, this game was released before the tournament and so doesn’t actually resemble the tournament in the slightest. No dodgy referees and a sense of optimism make the video game a more palatable way to relive this World Cup!

Seeing as Scotland didn’t actually qualify for the World Cup in 2002, it’s a stroke of good luck that they’re even in this game. In fact, they’re one of only nine teams featured that didn’t qualify. This does mean that another team must have missed out when Scotland were drawn into a group though. The other three teams in Group G were Japan, Russia and Tunisia. Luck was clearly on my side. It’s important to note that Scotland’s team in this game is utterly dire however, with the highest rated player being Barry Ferguson, a man seemingly made up of 95% cured ham. Our chances were slim even in one of the worst groups in World Cup history.

The first match of the group stage was against Japan. Attempting to get to grips with the engine changes from FIFA 2002 meant this match was a drab affair involving Scottish players passing the ball to nowhere and shots flying towards the corner flag. Luckily, the Japanese AI also apparently didn’t understand the rules of football. Thanks to a lucky strike from Hammy Ferguson, Scotland went top of the group with 3 points.

Next up was Tunisia. The less said about the 0-0 draw, the better. Embarassing. This meant that the final match with Russia would have to be a victory to ensure a place in the round of 16. Thankfully, the stars aligned and 2 incredibly scrappy goals were all it took to make sure Scotland went into the knockout stages after topping their group.

In the round of 16, Scotland’s opponents were China. Yes, China. Authenticity is not a selling point for this game. Needless to say, the goalkeeper was not challenged. One goal was all it took to see them off. Unfortunately, the draw for the quarter-finals landed us with France. The France team that included Henry, Zidane, Thuram, Trezeguet, amidst many, many others. Trezeguet was still on my kill list from FIFA 2002 and so this was a must-win game for multiple reasons. While Henry came incredibly close to ending Scotland’s dream early on, half-time approached with the score level. It would take a miracle to edge out the France squad. The messiah came in the form of Mark Burchill, who my mum actually knew growing up as she made her First Communion alongside his older brother, funnily enough. His slightly unrealistic volley in the 74th minute meant we just had to hold on. When the final whistle blew to signal our advancement to the semi-finals, I scratched Trezeguet’s name off my kill list. He will forever have to live with the shame of being beaten by a team which resembled Madame Tussaud’s after a chemical fire.

Lo and behold, our semi-final opponents were Brazil. The real-life winners of the tournament and the one dry patch in a wet fart of a World Cup. It first looked as if dreams would come true after the Ham Man himself, Barry Ferguson, scored a stunning strike from outside the box. Alas, the clearly much better Rivaldo ended that dream with two clinical finishes. The journey was over. Until the third-place play-off!

Our one shot at any sort of glory in the World Cup pitted us against a fantastic Croatian side. The fans held their collective breath. The mascots covered their eyes. The odd noodle shaped wobbly things you get at petrol stations stood still. 90 minutes later, Scotland collected their third-place medals thanks to good old Mark Burchill scoring two admittedly horrible goals. To be fair, this was a supremely terrible side finishing in third place in the most prestigious tournament in the world. You wouldn’t see this in real life. So who played in the third-place match in 2002? South Korea and Turkey. Perhaps this game is more realistic than first thought.

So could you recommend this game in 2022? Honestly, not really. While the World Cup 98 game is a classic thanks to Blur's Song 2 and being able to play as all 172 FIFA-registered teams, this game restricts you to a select few unqualified teams and omits the qualification process entirely. It certainly doesn't justify the 'dream team' of developers working on it. I expect we'll see improvements being made in FIFA 2003 however, as we move onto a new and refined gameplay style!

@nessisonett Just commenting to express my enjoyment of your reviews. The FIFA games hold minuscule interest to me, yet I read because you have an entertaining way of describing them. Also, like others have said, I am fascinated that you would go back to these old annualized games and actual play them with a critical eye.

@Th3solution Thanks for reading! I do feel that for games which clearly have a lot of effort put into them by devs, these yearly games get left behind so quickly. It’s been nice to really delve into the exact changes between games.

@nessisonett It's such a shame that the 2002 World Cup game preceded the tournament itself. A couple of heroin-smuggling minigames would've really set it apart, or perhaps some kind of alternate mode where you play as the corrupt ref and have to try and send every player off the pitch for "legitimate" reasons before FIFA executives fire you for drawing too much attention to their malevolent scheme.

No judgement for that goalless draw against Tunisia; stranger things have happened. Also...

...you made chocolate milk come out of my nose.

Disappointing to see that the combined efforts of three development studios couldn't make this a World Cup tie-in to remember, at least not fondly. All the same, bravo for seeing Scotland through to third-place glory, and for using the game to provide us with yet another amusing review!

Well it took me over three months and 68 hours of playtime but I've finally finished Persona 3: Portable on Vita. There's so much I want to say about this game but I'll start with the positives first.

Considering this was the first Persona game with the formula we know today, it was a good first effort. You hang out with friends after school and battle monsters in dungeons, just like in the recent entries. The characters were interesting as you'd expect from a Persona game and the story was gripping enough to keep me going until the end. Furthermore, the soundtrack is definitely on par with Persona 4 and 5's soundtracks in terms of quantity and quality. This is definitely one aspect of the game I can say was just as good as the later entries.

Then there are the other aspects of the game. First off, I thought the story was decent enough. However, the main issue I had with it was that it took a long time before anything major happened. To sum up the story, there's an additional hour called the "Dark Hour" that occurs after midnight that only a certain number of individuals are able to observe, the so called SEES group that you're part of. Other people are unconscious during this time. During the Dark Hour, monsters come out from another world and the SEES' job is to eradicate them in order to prevent everyone from turning into zombies.

The story started out interesting, but it wasn't until halfway through the game that it established the villains of the story. For over 30 hours, you're just repeating the same pattern of defeating monsters and saving people without a goal in sight. This is what bothered me about the story, it just doesn't set things up well enough to keep you constantly motivated.

Then we have the social events of the game. In the later Persona games, you go on camping trips, to the beach during summer vacation, to field trips, to skiing trips and experience events like culture festival, beauty pageants and a concert that your group perform. In Persona 3 Portable, there are very few events like this throughout the story. You go just as expected on a trip to the beach during summer as well as a school trip to Kyoto. That's it. Those are the only major events that you do together with your friends and school during this 70 hour long adventure. There was even supposed to be a culture festival but they cancelled it because of a typhoon in the game. How convenient.

The lack of social events and things to distract you definitely worsened the experience a lot for me. After beating the monthly boss, you have 30 days of just doing social links over and over again. It felt just too repetitive, barely anything different happened during these 30 days. Very little story scenes, next to no social events, barely any interactions with your team members, it was just so stale. Just hang out with friends for 30 days, beat a boss, rinse and repeat.

It doesn't sound that bad, but it is. The social links in Persona 3 Portable are nowhere near as interesting as in the later games. First off, there aren't any social links for half of your team members. For the other half, you need to max out your stats in order to unlock them, which will happen during the second half of the game. So basically, you don't even get to interact with half of your team members until you're nearing the end of the game. That's just bizarre to me, it completely contradicts what a Persona game is supposed to be all about. How are you supposed to care about your team members when you don't even get to know them? This is one of the dumbest decisions that the developers made for this game.

The social links themselves are a hit or miss, mostly a miss. Most of the time, the activities only take one minute to do and they'll be something uninteresting like going out to eat or just talking outside of school. They're just not exciting to do in most cases, which is too bad because that's one of the main aspects of a Persona game.

The other main aspect of a Persona game is of course dungeon crawling. And this game definitely has the worst dungeons of all the three "modern" Persona titles. In fact, the game doesn't even have multiple dungeons. It has only one dungeon and it's 264 floors long. That's right, from beginning to end, you're just traversing through the same dungeon and going through the same types of floors over and over again. This is something you have to do in order to beat the game. At first it wasn't so bad, you were only required to do 20 floors per in-game month. But during the last two months, you had to do 50 floors every month. It was absolutely insane, like what were the developers thinking? While I still enjoyed battling and fusing Personas, it cannot be overstated enough how awful this aspect of the game is compared to Persona 4 and 5.

In short, Persona 3 Portable is a good game but it's easily the weakest Persona game of the "modern" three. Underwhelming story, barely any social events, undeveloped characters due to lack of social links and awful dungeon crawling. The only aspect that it can stand toe to toe with Persona 4 and 5 is the soundtrack, which is absolutely phenomenal in terms of quantity and quality.

Which makes me excited because I'm planning to play Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight next, which is a rhythm game where you hang out with the cast of Persona 3 and listen to the soundtrack of the game. God knows that the Persona 3 cast could use more time in the limelight. I'll definitely take this opportunity to get to know them better and I wouldn't even be surprised if I learn more about them through this spinoff than through the main game, which would be absolutely ridiculous.

So would I recommend Persona 3 Portable? Absolutely not. If you want to experience this series for the first time, you'd be better off playing Persona 4 Golden or Persona 5 Royal. Hopefully during this time, Atlus will release a remake of Persona 3 that fixes all the aforementioned issues. I'll definitely give the game another chance if that happens. But for now, steer clear of this game.

@LtSarge I'm playing through FES with my nephew, which has its own issues (can't control your party members, and characters become randomly exhausted when exploring dungeons, which is... annoying, to say the least), but a lot of my experience with the game is echoing your own so far. The social links are uninteresting and seemingly with random people (the fact that the douchey Kenji guy you meet early on turns out to be your first social link never ceases to amuse me). The dungeon is just the same endless crawl through an uninspired labyrinth. None of the NPCs are really firing up my imagination either.

I can understand why this felt fresh back in the mid 00s, but coming from from P5R, especially, it's difficult to connect with.

I was holding out for a P3 remake, but with them re-releasing P3P on modern devices, I don't think that's happening. We're probably never getting our definitive edition of P3.

Nice write-up.

@Ralizah Thanks!

Yeah, I mentioned this months ago but I had such a difficult time deciding whether to play FES or Portable. Ultimately, I went with Portable because you could control your characters. I can't imagine how annoying it must be to play without that option.

And yeah, the characters chosen as social links are definitely random. Would've preferred to hang out with my team members over most of them.

I recall there was some news a while back that Atlus sent out a survey asking people about which past games they want to see remade and Persona 3 was on the number one spot: https://personacentral.com/atlus-fans-remake-poll/

So who knows, maybe they'll release a remake down the line!

@LtSarge Oh, that's a real shame. I'd been told that Persona games have great storylines packed with very compelling characters, so to see you struggle with those elements in P3 is disappointing. I suppose it's a series that's been slowly refined over time; I know a lot of folks who've jumped in at the fifth game, thanks to its stellar reviews and rampant popularity, so it makes sense that older entries would be more of a risk to return to and comparatively check out. It's noble of you to list the elements you liked, and call P3 "good" at times, because it seems like you didn't enjoy the experience overall, and I'm always sorry to see somebody underwhelmed. Thanks for sharing (and warning)!

@RogerRoger Well if P3 wasn't good then I would've stopped playing it ages ago! That's what I did with Persona 1, I played it for a couple of hours, kept losing over and over to the same enemy (even on the easiest difficulty) and then decided to give up on the game as it wasn't enjoyable anymore. But Persona 3 is actually good, just not as good as the later entries.

I wanted to highlight the issues with Persona 3 because not a lot of people seem to bring them up when discussing it. It's kinda the same thing when I talked about Vice City a couple of weeks ago. We all know that Persona 3 and Vice City are good games, but do they have flaws? Well, now you know they do! I thought it'd be more interesting that way instead of talking about the good stuff that we already know about these games.

@LtSarge It's a tough thing to do, especially when discussing such well-regarded games, so I appreciate the balance and even-handedness of your analysis. Thanks!

2002 is a year best described in one question – Will Young or Gareth Gates? Or for those of you not familiar with Pop Idol, essentially a choice between burnt toast and cat vomit. Elsewhere, 2002 brought us classic movies like Spider-Man, Scooby-Doo and, uh, Die Another Day? To be honest, it was a bit of an odd year. At least with a new year, there’s always the one constant – a new FIFA game!

FIFA 2003 is a very different beast from the previous two yearly releases. The manual passing is gone, replaced with a more recognisable automatic pass with a simple tap of X. We finally have Triangle for through balls and R1 for sprinting too. The biggest difference is the pace – this is one of the fastest football games I’ve ever played. It’s very hard to keep up with the AI during matches. Defence-wise, tackling is less of an improvement and more just different. Square still functions as a murder button, enabling you to snap players’ legs like twigs. However, in order to normally tackle like a law-abiding individual, you basically have to hold Circle and walk into the ball. This is incredibly imprecise unfortunately, making it very hard to actually stop the AI from scoring. Finally, EA Sports added a skill-move system utilising the right stick, which is still in the series today. Except it doesn’t work here. At all. I could maybe succeed in kicking the ball forwards slightly, but that was about it.

In terms of presentation, this game is actually quite impressive! The game opens with a slick video showcasing the skills of Edgar Davids and our boy Roberto Carlos from last season. Plus, Ryan Giggs stares menacingly at the camera while spinning a ball in his hands for some reason. He looks a bit like he’s on trial, which is rather fitting. Ah well, at least in game, the players have distinct faces and look pretty similarly to real-life. The grass is fairly textured for the time too. Plus, for the first time, certain stadia are recreated and look rather nifty. Menus are a bit more modern, despite the odd choice of using Circle to move to the next page of certain settings. The better menu is actually necessary this time, as this game has features! There’s a whole mode in which the best teams in the game are put into their own league for example, which is pretty fun. This includes Arsenal, Man Utd, Barcelona etc. These teams are all the ones with their stadia recreated, so you can play a season with a real stadium every match.

And so we come to Celtic’s 2002-03 season. In real life, this was a season of ‘close but no cigar’. Martin O’Neill’s side lost out on the title on the final day of the season, with a goal difference 1 lower than Rangers. They also lost the League Cup final to Rangers. The highlight this season was their European campaign, as they beat teams such as Stuttgart and Liverpool in the UEFA Cup before unfortunately losing the final in extra time to Jose Mourinho’s Porto. So, could I top these results and right a historical wrong? The short answer is no.

The long answer is that I cannot play FIFA 2003 at all. Just utter mince at the game. The season started badly, with big defeats to minnows such as Partick Thistle (apologies to David Hasselhoff, Jeremy Corbyn, and my papa). This led me to explore the transfer market, which hadn’t changed at all from the last game. Unrealistic transfers, here we come! Old favourites Kahn and Roberto Carlos were joined by Edgar Davids (with signature goggles) this time round, with Barcelona inexplicably paying millions for unremarkable Scottish men in their 30s to cover the cost. I can only assume they’re being put to work in the Nou Camp’s catering department, as there is no chance in hell that they’re playing for Barcelona. Interestingly, the highest rated player in this game is Matteo Brighi. Who I have never heard of. Bizarre. Then again, Roy Keane is the best player in the Premier League and Celtic’s own Johan Mjällby was seemingly worthy of an 87 rating. The scouts must have been on holiday.

With a renewed squad and vastly improved defence, Celtic did find their form domestically as Christmas approached. We were even in 2nd place at one stage! Elsewhere was a different story. A 3-0 loss to Dundee ensured the Cup run didn’t progress past the first round. In Europe, 6 consecutive losses in a group consisting of Barcelona, Roma and Newcastle meant that even UEFA Cup action was out of reach. Dreadful. I went back to the drawing board at Christmas and decided that our defence needed even more bolstering. In came Jamie Carragher, the Scouser Supreme. Could he be the answer to our prayers? Well, let’s just say that Martin O’Neill would have been sacked before the season was over. Loss after loss meant that our final position was 5th in the league. A far cry from last season. A humbling. A humiliation.

And so another season comes to an end. This game is actually a decent step forwards for the series, I’m just really quite terrible at it. There are interesting innovations that are still in the series to this day, however rough they were in 2002. We didn’t get the results that we were looking for, but as Yazz once said, the only way is up. I’ll leave you with this lovely image showcasing the actual winners of this season (along with fictional team Dingwall), as I call my papa to tell him that Partick Thistle finally won something!

As an addendum, I completely forgot to mention that EA Trax makes its debut in this game! Basically it’s just incredibly dated techno although with a few bops.

@nessisonett Definitely sounds like an improvement from the game the previous year, even if the changes ended up making you less proficient at the game overall. Is this your first time playing them, or are you re-experiencing old classics you already owned?

Your captures continue to look very nice.

@Ralizah This is mostly my first time playing these specific ones, FIFA 2004 was the only one I actually had that generation on the GameCube. I was more of a Pro Evolution Soccer player back then! Glad I got them cheap physically, it meant I could play them on PC and upscale them to get those captures, even if the game runs smoother natively on my PS2 for some reason.

@nessisonett Hey, what did Die Another Day ever do to you?! Dude, Attack of the Clones was right there, surely that would've been an easier target?!

Jeez. On reflection, you're right. 2002 was a heck of a year.

Sounds like some of this entry's tweaks to the gameplay have stood the test of time, even if they were broken to begin with, and that's always interesting to go back and track. Shame about the imprecise tackling, though. I can imagine that getting really frustrating when the A.I. is in beast mode. Also, there seems to be even more awkward foreshadowing than you noted, as that "best of the best" league reminds me of last year's European Super League fiasco. At least here, it has some upsides!

Bad luck with your season, even if I did enjoy reading the resulting rundown. Methinks you could have a future as a pretty cutting commentator or columnist, if you wanted to! I know I'd read a heck of a lot more about football if you were writing a summary each week!

@RogerRoger Hahaha, Die Another Day was less words to type! As always, thanks for reading as I’m glad somebody is entertained by what is particularly niche reviews!

Just finished Scorn on Series X. What a great and unique experience! Really glad that I stuck with it even though its opening level is absolutely atrocious. As someone who knew nothing about the game going into it, it was frustrating to say the least to discover that it's initially a puzzle game and the first puzzle takes place in a huge area with many different paths and contraptions. It was so confusing and it made me give up on the game at first. But then I decided to give it another chance and it becomes much better after the first major puzzle. The pacing was much more consistent afterwards.

What I liked about the game is its art style. I don't know much about the style "biomechanical", which is apparently a style that an artist named H.R. Giger is known for incorporating in his paintings. It's also heavily reminiscent of the Alien movies, which I believe was also inspired by Giger's works. Either way, it's a very unique and captivating art style for a horror game. Even though the game itself was never scary in terms of jump scares, it was still incredibly disturbing due to its visuals.

In terms of gameplay, the game is primarily a puzzle title but it does get combat after a while when the game introduces enemies. In other words, you'll have to manage ammo and health later on. At first I didn't like this aspect because I thought it was just unnecessary. I'd just run away from the enemies whenever I could. But after some time, I found it to be more fun to actually shoot them as the game gives you plenty of ammo and health throughout its 5-6 hour campaign.

When it comes to the story, I honestly had no clue what was going on or what I even accomplished towards the end. Ultimately, I think this was an artistic experience where the player is supposed to make their own interpretations about the world and the events that unfolded there.

Along with a unique art style, the game had great sound to boot that made for a tense and creepy atmosphere.

In short, I really enjoyed my time with Scorn. If you disregard the awful opening level, there's a great game to be experienced here that doesn't overstay its welcome. I've read that some people think it's too short, but 5-6 hours is pretty standard for a horror game like this. I don't think it would've been better to extend it for longer than that. It accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to create an artistic experience that's short but sweet. It definitely gets a recommendation from me.

On a side note, it was also pretty easy to get all the achievements. There are only 12 ones and I missed only one, which you can get very easily in the beginning of the game. Great title if you're looking for some easy gamerscore.