Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

@DominusPlatypus Nice write-up! The camera angle adopted in these games has always seemed like the worst possible one for a 3D platformer, so it's nice to see that frustration echoed in your experience with the game. There are so many aspects of the series I know I'd have to rip apart if I ever actually seriously sat down a completed one of these games.

The progression system does sound extremely weird. I have heard that this game has nightmarish platinum trophy requirements, but I'm surprised to hear that even just the act of playing through the game normally is tedious.

It IS very pretty, though! Games like this and the new Ratchet and Clank titles make me wish Sony and Microsoft would double down on using the grunt of the next-gen hardware to create more truly stunning 3D platformers, as, IMO, stylized art-styles benefit dramatically from the jump in tech when effort is put in to make them look nice.

@DominusPlatypus Really enjoyed your Crash 4 piece up there! Thanks for sharing!

Finally finished Guardians of the Galaxy today! Won't post a proper review for a bit because writing takes time but right now all i'm gonna say is that it was an utter delight from start to finish. It was emotional, funny, charming and most of all, fun. It utilised odd, cool and obscure marvel comics characters like Fin Fang Foom, Lady Hellbender, Adam Warlock, Ruby Thursday and Cosmo the Space Dog really well and made them feel like characters instead of cameos to check off a box. The writing was tight and the action was fun but the boss fights sucked. Other than that, amazing game!

Didn't think I'd complete this game anytime soon considering I started it up months ago, decided to restart it halfway through by playing the vastly better remastered version and then lost interest since I didn't feel like playing the same missions over again. But I've finally finished Grand Theft Auto: Vice City! I'm really glad that I dropped the original Xbox version which ran poorly and started playing the Series X version which is so much better. I didn't like Vice City that much originally but due to this better version, I actually enjoyed it a lot.

So what did I think about the game? Well for starters, I think it's overall better than GTA 3 in a lot of ways. The story missions were more fun and varied, not to mention less frustrating than GTA 3's. Having a checkpoint system in the Series X version also made the missions less frustrating in general. Moreover, the 80s setting of Miami is absolutely lovely and listening to a soundtrack full of classic tunes was a delight.

What I didn't like about the game is the properties. The fact that you have to buy six properties and finish each one's missions in order to unlock the final story mission was very annoying. I basically had to grind for money after every couple of missions, which bogged down the experience severely. Not to mention that you could potentially miss out on some very cool missions if you don't purchase certain properties. I had to use a guide for the last half of the game in order to find out which properties had these missions. Otherwise I would've just skipped over a few and missed out on several missions.

Granted, it did feel nice to have so much freedom to choose which missions I wanted to do next instead of having to do all of them in a certain order. But I can't help but feel that you could miss out on so much content because of the way the second half of the game is structured.

One thing I want to mention though is that I feel like Vice City is rather overrated. It is a good GTA game but it's nothing more than a reskin of GTA 3. It doesn't do enough to differentiate itself from that game. It's not like the jump from San Andreas to GTA IV, or GTA IV to GTA V. The story wasn't all that captivating either and the missions felt like your bog-standard GTA missions. And because of property missions, half of the story missions felt disjointed. Even the world felt smaller than the one in GTA 3. Simply put, the game didn't blow me away as I expected it to do when going into it.

So all in all, I enjoyed Vice City a lot and I like it more than GTA 3. But to me it's an overrated game as it doesn't do anything special. An 80s setting isn't enough to differentiate a game that shares so many similarities to its predecessor. To sum it up: it's basically more of the same, but better. And that's honestly good enough for me as I love GTA.

@LtSarge Nice write-up.

I feel like one reason Vice City caught on so much is that Rockstar injected it with a sense of personality that was just missing from GTA 3. Same with San Andreas, actually, although that was also different in a number of ways from its predecessors. Both sequels had much funnier dialogue, more interesting characters, and made better use of color than GTA 3, which felt very... drab, IMO.

And yeah. the 80s theme was popular. Granted, you see a ton of nostalgia for 80s American culture now, but back when this came out, there wasn't necessarily this deluge of such content.

@Ralizah I wouldn’t say that GTA 3 was missing personality per se, it just wasn’t as in your face. The humour’s a bit darker, like the Kyle McLachlan missions where it slowly insinuates he’s a cannibal. There’s still plenty personality, it just takes a different form, which is mostly Mafia caricatures and that also applies to the dull colours and abundance of skyscrapers in a clear effort to reflect the style of those movies around that time. It still has some of the goofy stuff obviously like basically everything Maria gets up to or the radio talk shows though.

@LtSarge There is a very good reason why Vice City feels like a reskin of the third game, as it was only released in 2002, the year after. Development starting just as 3 was finished in late 2001.

Personally, I think it is an outstanding achievement all things considered! I am a bit biased towards towards the games though, as I can remember being totally blown away by them at the time.

Thanks for the review! I do plan in eventually getting round to the remasters eventually as I hear that most of the bugs and glitches have been fixed by now.

@Ralizah Thank you!

I have to agree with @nessisonett, the personality was certainly there in GTA 3 but it just wasn't as explicit. It didn't help either that the world of GTA 3 wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as Vice City. Although Tommy Vercetti is a much more interesting protagonist than the one from GTA 3 (obviously).

@JohnnyShoulder Yeah that's what I thought and I don't mind that. I think Vice City helped popularise the franchise even more after GTA 3, which is great. I would've probably liked the game even more if I had grown up with it, but alas I missed out on that time.

Your welcome! That's actually one thing I didn't mention in my post but considering I didn't mention it, you could probably figure out that I wasn't bothered enough by bugs/glitches to bring it up. Which is true! I only experienced some visual bugs here and there but nothing that impacted the gameplay. So I think it's safe to say that Vice City works great now, at least on current-gen systems.

I once wrote a letter to a gaming magazine criticising GTA: Vice City for a number of reasons. They edited it out of context to make me sound like an absolute lunatic and then published it in their "rage corner", so I guess it's a good thing that I signed it with a pseudonym.

@LtSarge Regardless of the game in question, it's always good to go back and give something a second shot, especially when you end up enjoying it more than you'd done so previously!

2001. Officially The Future™. While there unfortunately was no actual space odyssey in that year, we did get to see the first movies in the Harry Potter, Fast & Furious, and Lord of the Rings franchises. The year also gave us Kylie’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and Shaggy’s It Wasn’t Me (yes it was Shaggy, you cad). More than anything, 2001 delivered crimes against humanity such as 9/11, The War on Terror and DJ Ötzi’s Hey Baby.

FIFA 2002 smacks you over the face with Noughties nostalgia as soon as it boots, with Gorillaz’ 19-2000 accompanying a seizure-inducing cacophony of footballing scenes. This culminates in a strange slow-mo pan around Thierry Henry, the cover star. The menu’s a rather drab affair in comparison, with barely any fluff. You’ve got season mode, kick-off, and various cups, all set to generic techno. No EA Trax here, folks!

Gameplay is a lot better than FIFA 2001 although still a bit odd. The best change is obviously the inclusion of a power bar, although it has basically three modes depending on where in the bar it lands – tickling the ball with your toes, a regular shot, or blasting the ball at 400MPH into the stratosphere. The power bar is also used for passes, which are completely manual and allow for creativity such as long through balls. Deadball situations are mostly unchanged from FIFA 2001 however. The bicycle kick exploit is also patched out, meaning no records are being broken by Larsson this season!

On the defence front, tackling is either ‘bash them off the ball’ or ‘send them to the mortuary’. As was customary in these early titles, you can also absolutely annihilate goalkeepers for no reason other than watching the red card cutscene. To be honest, you’ll spend most of your time mashing Triangle to sprint after the ball, with the occasional Circle to boot the other player in the shins. With the basics covered, let’s see how Celtic’s 2001/02 season went.

In real life, Martin O’Neill’s Celtic squad were coming off a treble-winning season, just like we achieved in FIFA 2001. During the summer, they did lose players like Berkovic to Man City, and Alan Stubbs to Everton, but they also had a brilliant crop of players coming in. Steve Guppy rejoined O’Neill for about the millionth time like a budget stalker, fan favourite big ol’ bloke Bobo Balde arrived from Toulouse and John Hartson, everybody’s least favourite pundit, signed for £6 million. So with this new squad, did results go our way? Well, to start with… no.

While it’s easy to blame my lack of skills and attempting to get to grips with the new systems for the 6-3 defeat to Rangers in the first Old Firm of the season, I blamed my defence and goalkeeper like a good manager does. Something had to change other than taking a rusty machete to 5-goal scoring Claudio Caniggia’s knees. It was time to explore the transfer market.

As I quickly learned, the market is not sophisticated. At all. Like a dodgy pawnbroker, if you have the money then you can buy anything you want. No such thing as club reputation or player loyalty. So Celtic were now the proud owners of Oliver Kahn in goals and Roberto Carlos in defence/on free kicks. The results quickly came pouring in, aided in no small part by the giant German wall between the posts. Larsson (42 goals) and Sutton (36 goals) proved just as lethal at the other end, along with a surprisingly prolific Neil Lennon (22 goals), complete with bleached blonde hair that was scrubbed from my memory.

This stellar form meant Celtic overtook Rangers in the league in March, along with knocking them out of the cup in the semi-finals. The Scottish Cup final against Hibs (shortened to Hiber annoyingly) was a tense affair, with the score being 2-2 going into extra time. Stilyan Petrov secured the trophy for the second year in a row with a screamer that… ended the match. Apparently Golden Goal was still a thing in 2001. With the league and cup secured, all that remained was the Champions League. Unfortunately, the season ended in tragedy with a semi-final against Juventus decided on away goals. 2-2 away and 3-3 at home ensured Celtic went home empty-handed. David Trezeguet scored all 5 goals for Juventus, meaning he is now on my kill list. Heartbreaking.

All in all, it was a successful season for Celtic, having won the league and Scottish Cup despite early jitters. Martin O’Neill’s job is safe for now. The game is honestly pretty decent as well, with the manual passing adding an element of user skill missing from other similar games. We’ll just have to wait and see how Celtic fare in the next season. First, however… there was another game released that summer by EA. Looks like Scotland are going to World Cup 2002!

@nessisonett It's baaaack!!

I think I'd have switched the game off the instant it showed me Thierry Henry in bullet time, so props for sticking with it, and congratulations on engineering an impressive comeback for Celtic! Bad luck with the Champion's League, though. In terms of gameplay, your description of the new power bar reminds me of that old "you have selected Power Drive" chestnut but in all seriousness, it's great when sports games (particularly older ones) give you any degree of freedom over your actions, as I seem to recall the handful I've played being quite restrained, in the name of "realism".

Enjoyable, often hilarious review, just as before! Thanks for sharing, and onward to the World Cup!

@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.