Gamer Obscurea; Games in Hiding

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This is another one of those licensed gems and I'm going to stop on this one... Because this form of obscure game is hard to dig through; SO MANY BAD GAMES!!!!! SO MANY TITLES THAT ARE SO WELL KNOWN, BOTH GOOD AND BAD!!!! THIS IS A LIST OF GOOD ONES FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!...*Sigh* There do exist good games, hundreds I've probably never touched on, but finding the obscure is hard...

Gargoyles
Sega Genisis​

Gargoyles; before I get into the game, I want to talk about the IP since this is something not a lot of kiddies will get, especially if they're still watching pewdiepie and not bothering to seek other forms of entertainment. Gargoyles was Disney doing something dark right; in an era of colorful cartoony cartoons of Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop and so on with cartoons being so colorful and such. You may ask, ok, what's so great about it? The TV show was a gothic, epic fantasy, sort of like Batman the Animated Series meets Lord Of the Rings, except Disney saw how violent that got and toned it down while adding a story to it. You had creature that we're vulnerable by day, come to life by night to protect their home in THE PRESENT!!! No I'm not joking, Show's stuff happens, they sleep in statues until the present day in New York City. Each episode had elements of science fiction, some form of fantasy and magic and... It's hard to put into words, first season is slow, but picks up in season 2-4.

So you can imagine my surprise when I tried looking at games that we're made based on popular cartoons and came across this beauty.

The game loosely follow the TV show with the Gargoyles looking for the Eye of Odin, a talisman from the show with strong magic, in hopes to keep it out the hands of humans, due to the effects it has on it's host when worn. The game matches up the mechanics with the show quite good as well, such as being able to scale walls, glide, attack and so on, with 11 levels and a boss at the end with the difficulty scaling up nicely with each passing level. The game's sprites, art for most enemy designs we're handrawn before being pixelated, the same method use when the Aladdin video game was developed. This was a plat-former that did the TV show justice... So why is it not well heard of as a licensed title?

It's a licensed IP video game and from this Era, a lot of other games we're building a reputation to be badly designed titles, including games not developed by LJN. You just need to watch the AVGN on his episode with Ren and Stimpy dealing with the fire house game to get what I mean. That's 'PART' of the reason though, the other reason is, you can ask a friend or some random gaming woman, girl or guy if they remember Gargoyles, depending on who you ask, a large amount of them won't either recall the show or remember and brush it off even. It's roughly in the same boat as Golden Sun, another IP and title that will soon be forgotten unless we draw attention to it.... Good lord, Golden Sun and Gargoyles... That would be an epic game!

MY NEXT POST WILL BE A GAME FROM JAPAN WHERE THE VOICES ARE DONE IN ENGLISH!... No, I'm not joking, the game's story is based in the USA, All the characters speak English and yet the game was both developed and sold in Japan.... I will post it in a day or 2. Not in weeks long struggles this time.... BECAUSE THIS STUFF IS HARD TO LOOK FOR!!!

 

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Metal Wolf Chaos
Xbox Origional || Later for: XboxOne, PS4, PC​

Metal Wolf Chaos is a game most internet junkies know about pretty well in the emulation community, especially people who mod their Xbox's. I recently got a chance to give the game a fair shot to play.

If I had to describe the game itself, IT'S basically G.I. Joe went to Studio Ghibli, Studio Ghibli refused to animate a Japanese version and dumped off to the guys who do Gundam. They then thought we didn't have enough guns, super glued guns to an important figure and called in "American" Gaming... The figure they super glue those guns to is the president of the United States. People still angry at Trump? Still want Hillary? Screw them, VOTE FOR THIS GUY! HE HAS A FREAKING MECH AND IS USING IT TO DEFEND AMERICA! *insert the National Athem.*

Alright, the story to the game is America no longer becomes a democracy and we loose everything legally to Communism. The president of the USA hate's this, so he nab's a war mech, loads it with heavy artillery, has the secret service among other resources be his support team and goes on a freedom crusade bender, freeing the cities under heavy control in an attempt to reclaim his own country the hard way. From here, it just get's corny and just straight up funny, like something out of a Shonen jump manga; I mean the voted ruler of one nation, taking a war machine out to reclaim his own country is about as off the wall as it gets, especially when the the plot for this whole thing started when some pain decided to perform a Coup from the inside out.

The Game itself roughly controls like An Armored Core game for the PS2. You have a wide-ish aiming reticle, Take aim to any enemies and pull the trigger. Your aiming reticle coverage and damage is dependent on the weapon, so it's something to consider when tackling this game itself. You can even swap weapons on the move while running, dodging or moving to position somewhere to gain a vantage point.

Even for what it is, the game is incredibly playable for folks speaking and understanding English as their first language because all of the dialogue that has been recorded is English. Every voice actor, every in-game cut-scene; all the voice actors read their lines in English; even 45% of the menu is in English! And this is a game that was developed and released in Japan Only!

So why bring up a game a lot of people who prefer not to pirate play? The game was only released in Japan; true. And the only way to play it was to softmod an Xbox or buy the game and ship it in from the country out east. I'm posting this because there's a re-release coming out here to the West, Metal Wolf Chaos:XD, or the title banner above for this post. The game is getting re skinned and retooled for today's video gaming standards.

Make America Great again? Why not Mech America Great Again!? XD

My jokes aside, when it releases, I recommend looking it up!

 

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Elements The Game
PC, Some older smart phones that support Flash​

This is another game shoved out of the lime-light, though not by choice to be in the light and preferring to stay where it is, obscure. This is actually an addictive card game that easy-ish to grasp, though difficult to get through for multiple reasons.

In Element's, you play as an Omnipresent being who can control the elements and you control one particular element to start out. You then participate in a battle to become a master of the elements.

So the game's story is.... Well, very open ended and there's a lot I probably got wrong, but there is no wrong way to go about the game. You have a large-ish library of cards with different elements that perform different things. Gravity element pulls out huge creatures, mounts up damage and can give monsters that can hit like a train. Death Element generate undead monster's that self revive into skeletal warriors and drain life. Time Element plays with the timing of a game, allowing you to draw into more cards while slowing your opponents advance, Fire element to burn and destroy things, the Entropy element where you rely on chaos and randomness to get by.... They have multiple elements to pick from and multiple playstyles of how you want to construct your deck.

How does the game play? It's sort of like magic the gathering, except your mana is accumulative and doesn't expire. You gather Quanta by playing pillars, the pillars produce the necessary energy needed to play cards, some pillars produce two types of energy, other's produce random amounts. You can play monsters, spells and even equip equipment to yourself to do some really broken effects.

You use the Quanta to then play monster's which attack automatically as soon as you choose to end your turn. When you have your monsters played and pillars up, at the end of the turn, the creatures attack, the quanta is refreshed and it's your opponent's turn.

That game mechanics are simple, it can played quickly in the background on your browser while waiting on your next match in Dota 2, League of Legends, Overwatch or just to kill a little time before work.

Con's, there are a few huge cons to the game; the upgrade system and the power balance... This game isn't as far along updated as anyone person would think, there are no new cards added to the arsenal since the game's last major update years ago, so if there are player's expecting brand new cards; I'm sorry to say that your out of luck. Whatever is on the site now is all that remains. The next big con are a few of the minor bugs; once you start playing the game, some of the effect's that should do what they normally do will trip out and do a complete 360 on your match.

An example if you decide to look into this game; I have a Chimera creature that takes all of my monsters on the field and turn's it into one massive monster with all the life and attack power of the monster's in play. There is a token monster that self replicates called the Malignant Cell; I had a huge cluster of them, figured it would make one massive chimera to call an end game.... Instead, it wiped out my field, started me over with one cell and I got slaughtered in 4 turns while waiting on the cell's to re-duplicate.

The next con is the card upgrade system... When you start, You get a bunch of cards which are all standard and basic, When you finish the quest tutorials, you can upgrade the cards into their next form once and the upgraded forms are a lot better in more ways than one. Your pillars become towers which given instant energy once played, your big monsters cost lest and do more damage, etc. But the amount needed to upgrade them is just too much! You need about 1,500 Electrum or Gold to upgrade a single card. A standard match against an AI net's between 1-5 gold, 10 if you beat the AI without taking a scratch. There are tougher A.I.'s that net between 20~100 Gold, but those guys AI's are like a Krillin going up to Goku and attempting to punch him..... Only to have Krillin not only hit himself but gut himself on his own Kamahameha wave; You don't know how that's even possible.. You need better cards before even attempting a fight with them. You also have a daily fortune where they give you an UN-upgraded card daily and a cash bonus, which range between 50~1000 gold.... which helps upgrade your deck but becomes so randomized that you don't know what you'll get. To top it off, there are cards you can't buy in the game's shop to begin with and the only way to attain them is through the Oracle or daily fortune. Which also leads me to speak that you don't have to pay cash to get cards, If you can get ahold of the creators and donate them some dough over paypal, they'll give you an Elements Reward code to get some donation goodies; but the game is so far out of the way that it may or is already not much to donate anymore.

That aside, Earlier I said that the cards aren't updated to the fullest; they aren't properly balanced. The game has been balanced up until it's last update but it's last meta is still the current Meta. If your intending to face the A.I. and friends alone, then you don't need to worry about the Meta since this is probably best to be played for fun.

The last con is that this game was built using Flash... This is another buried Flash title that does have some fun factor while trying to fill in the wait time, but like I mentioned post's back, flash is being phased out faster than EA can put out your next NFL game or Call of Duty.... If EA does not do Call of Duty, then I apologize, I never got into those shooters when they we're the hype. When flash phases out permanently, then this game will no longer be playable.

If you want to give it a try and play it while you can, you can play it...

???Here???

 

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Monster Rancher
PS1, PS2, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, PC, Android, Nintendo DS, iOS, PC​

Ok, I'm heading out to an anime con to do a panel on some abandoned video game's. I'm not doing a Game Obscurea Panel there, I'm doing one on some abandoned 'Monster' Breeding Games. If your going to Ken-To-kyo con, I hope to see some of ya there at Monster Den! If not, I'll see someone around at some point!

This is a game I'm intending to show at the panel and is a franchise in need of some western love! Monster Rancher!

Before I get any head scratches; Monster Rancher made it's first release in 1997, about roughly a year after Pokemon came out and took the world by wildfire, storm and Dues Ex Machina. You had 3 competing IP's back then to fight the Pokemon Juggernaut for your hard earned cash and the options we're it;s popular toe-to-toe rival Digimon which has had a massive resurgence in RPG titles ALL OVER THE FREAKING INTERNET, PS4 AND ONLY LORD KNOWS WHAT ELSE!!! And the lesser known Monster Rancher... Out west. Out in the east, this thing was the 2nd Juggernaut to fight Pokemon for the hard earned yen and this franchise is popular out there nearly as much as Pokemon. If anything, this franchise was their Digimon! There was an anime based on this!

LOOK AT THIS!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSq_mHcmvyc


So what was this franchise about? Nixxing the opening above on you tube; It was about literally raising monsters to be combatant Champions. I won't go into the details of the later games, but I do want to go into the details about the earlier games between the PS1 and PS2.

You started the game as a budding rancher and go to the Monster Shrine to get your first monster. Where the game's most 'unique' attribute comes in. It's so unique that it's barely been replicated with the exception of Dance Factory for the PS2 by Code Masters! You use Disk's to spawn your monsters!... By Disk's, I mean your literal disk's. Music CD's, PS1 CD's, PS2 game disk's movies, As long as it was a CD, it could spawn a monster! It would spawn a monster based on the CD's data; so if you got a Moochi with weak stats from... I don't know, a Michael Jackson music CD of Moon Walker, you will continue to get Moochi from that CD with the same weak stats and that will continue to happen across any other copy of the game on the PS1 for that iteration. Monster Rancher 2 on the PS1 might yield a Golem instead with high defense on that same CD, but you will continue to get that Golem across all copies of Monster Rancher 2 and so on. This leads to multiple people experimenting with different CD's, burning different data on re-writable CD's so much that a lot of people have spawned a list of what CD yields what monster!

Once you get your monster, you train them. You control their diet, train them in defense, get them to workout on their strength, praise them or scold them if they mess up, hire a retired monster coach from the association to train your monster further to up a stat and keep this up until the big contest where monsters enter the area to slug it out. If you win or at least place, you win gold to help your monster's training further to become more powerful until they get too old and retire... Which is another interesting mechanic; your monster's age and can get too old to fight until they need to retire either to go to a retirement ranch/land/home or coach. This is an interesting mechanic because your not stuck with the same monster and if you screw up somewhere with your monster, you can re-spawn a new one and give it a better training session from the same disk or try your luck with another monster on a different disk you haven't tried yet. At the same time, it can be a problem when trying to fight your way to the top with the bigger tournaments. You have a monster you've trained it's heart out and you recently passed the Gold Tournament, your about to move onto the Platinum Tournament to beat the game, during your month of training; you get a text message that it looks like your monster is slowing down. It's age is slowing and when you finally get into the big tournament, your monster fails in the next to last match and just as your about to re-apply, your monster is no longer ready to be fighting fit and needs to retire. WHICH HAS HAPPENED TO ME MORE TIMES THAN YOU PEOPLE KNOW ON THE GAME BOY ADVANCE!

There is an RPG deviation of the game in the series and an addictive card game with an interesting play style; but I'll leave that for another day... that and I don't have access to the RPG game of the series.

My aggravations aside; this whole series is an impressive and fun to play game as the later versions include more things to do with your monsters from training to dungeon diving to discover more methods to spawn more powerful monsters. Though the game's cult following in the USA is somewhat gone. There's a die-hard cult following with a website, but that's as much of the West following cult to the game as there is. If your going to a flea market or retro game shop and see a copy for the old PS1, PS2 or even the old Gameboy Advance, I recommend picking it up and take a look at the competition Japan was fighting against.

 

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Before I dip into my obscure game post; I want to pay omage and DIRECT ATTENTION to a service, backed by fans, that has restored, faithfully, the Sega Dreamcast's ability to play video games on this retro classic console online once more!

You all know I am a deep-deep-deep fan of the dreamcast... Does this sucker have it's flaws? It does an I'm no fan-boy to ignore the truth; but game enthusiast's alike getting together to not only resurrect these service's but attempt to WORK AROUND the lousy Dial up modem with DreamPi? Sign me up and any other game collector out there! The Dreamcast ladies and gentlemen; RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD BY DIE-HARD FANS!.... Sort of. Ya couldn't stop the Game boy and ya can't stop the Dreamcast!... BUUUUUUUUT enough gushing as a nerd. POST TIME!

Outcast​

OK, this one is a bit of an older title, with an HD remake and there's not a lot to go about. The start of the game, you play as the leftover military stunt double from Diehard, Double Team and Commando who give him the same usual gambit you see in most dumb B-movie action flicks trying to convince him to do one more job... or rather, force him into one. On route to his mission site, he learns we discovered how to CROSS DIMENSIONS and sent a probe over there...sadly, a native on the other side sees the probe, blows it up and after blowing it up, creates a worm-vaccum-hole that will eat earth and out dimension. He's sent in with a team to get it back,someone he hates to work with and a science officer to fix the thing and they get separated in the transfer. When he get's there, the alien race treat him or you like a deity from their prophecy and ask you to go kick ass or kill these other jack asses who rule the planet..... And these guy's, these aliens are... How do I describe them; they are the equivalence of Ned Flanders from the Simpsons and the most ZEN monks seeking peace you'll ever meet in your life; THEIR WHOLE RELIGION IS BASED ON A HERO FROM ANOTHER WORLD COMING TO FIX ALL THEIR PROBLEMS.... It's kinda lazy, but in retrospect, it makes sense why they need help and give you purpose... against Red Faction Gurrellia... I mean, come on guys, whole planet hate's EDF, your everywhere, blow some stuff up on your own! DON'T WAIT FOR MASON! They agree that if you help them, they'll help ya find the probe and save your dimension.

OK, you get into the game and there are some pretty cool mechanics; the title is treated as one of the earliest adoptions of an open world game. You have a radar or map, you find guns, collect gear and stuff from the world and bring it to a smith for him or her to forge you ammo or health packs. There's a very rough but elementary stealth system, the need for tactic from fighting head on, running and taking out groups of enemies is needed here. If you charge in blindly without a plan or method to attack and kill them quickly, you'll hit game over before you finish your first quest. You have a chance, multiple chances, to make your enemies weaker by cutting off their food supplies, blowing up their weapons to leave them defenseless, all that stuff. The more ya help the people too, the more forgiving of you they'll be if you screw up and they more rewarding of stuff they'll give ya to survive.

It's a not so buried title since it has an HD remake that's not only cleaned up in terms of re-textured and re-modeled models with their worlds and an easier Gui to use, IT SUPPORTS WIDE SCREEN!!! The original Outcast came out years ago when we we're rocking CRT computer screens, which is fine since that is what all folks gamed on years ago, but if your gonna do a sexy HD remake, go the full 9 miles and give us an awesome widescreen support.

Ya can pick up this title on Gog or Steam.

...and I'm sorry I don't have anything more obscure, DOING THIS TOPIC IS HARD!.... I mean really hard! Trying to find games that are playable! Good ones and all I can find are a sea of bad ones and I swore off being the next AVGN, you want bad games? Lodge you're requests at him!

 

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Beyond the Beyond
Developed by Camelot
PS1​

Before I got looking again and explaining this title, I want shed a little more light on the Developer.
Obscure gamers, ya boot up you copy of Golden Sun, you should see the developer Camelot; the geniuses behind the BRILLIANT Golden Sun Games! ((Heard someone encased their CARTRIDGE BOARDS IN A SOLID GOLD HOUSING FOR THE GAME ITS- *I am smacked for terrible rumors*)) Observing Camelot, I wondered if they did any other awesome RPG's... And they kinda did for a while before Gold Sun. They also developed a Handful of RPG's on the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn, Sega CD, Sega Game Gear and only 1 RPG on the PS1, which is what I'm posting today.

You may also ask, WHAT KIND OF RPG'S DID THEY MAKE BESIDES YOUR FAVORITE GOLDEN SUN GAME BOY ADVANCE RPG, A MUST HAVE AND CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT IN YOUR HANDHELD COLLECTION?! A bunch of Fire Emblem Clones and one rough Suikoden Clone. And they're... Sub... Par..-ish.

If anyone remembers 'Shining Force,' that was a game that was developed by Camelot, though it's not as much as an obscure game because you can pick it up over on nearly any Sega Collection release on the PC or Game Boy Advance and up. Don't get me wrong, I love Shining Force as well, but they developed SO MANY sequels under Sega for it, 2-3 of them we'll never be able to pick up to play such as Shining Force Gaiden: Final Conflict, Shining Force 3 or Shining Force CD... Granted, you have emulation, but noone's perfected Sega Saturn emulation due to the anti-piracy locks surrounding the consoles everything so SF 3 can't really be 'pirated' or purchased properly without loosing an arm or leg. The same goes for the Last 2, however depending your views on Emulation and if Nintendo allows Gaiden to be played on the 3DS shop, you'll get a chance at it.

The last RPG under Sega's name they released was Shining Force 3; from there they went on to develop games under Nintendo; MOSTLY MARIO SPORT GAMES SUCH AS MARIO TENNIS AND GOLF!!!.... Until Golden Sun!.... And then a bunch or Sports games afterwards until today; Their latest one being Mario Tennis for your Nintendo switch.

Anyway, back to Beyond the Beyond!
It's sort of a Standard RPG with puzzle elements. There's nothing special about it with the exception of Combat and some of the puzzles look like a precursor to Golden Sun. In Battles, your fighting target's is more group based than attacking a single target per character and and the game has been described as 'difficult to beat.' Such as the 80's curse of making games too hard to pad the games length to get your money's worth vs. actual content you get.... HOW IZ THAT POSSI- Alright, In the battles, you got 2 Stats, Vitality and life points. Vitality is your basic, bare bone HP stat, you have it, you live to fight; you lose all of it, the some of your 'Life Points' get subtracted and heal your Vitality Points; when this happens though, that character looses a turn or chance to attack... Which becomes an issue when you have monsters faster than you one shooting you until game over and grinding is tedious in this title.... THAT ASIDE, for an early PS1 game, the game does ahve some beauty to their maps, they are mostly standard RPG tilesets reused a lot, but they attempt to use the PS1's ability to warp some of the dungeons with 3D effects to give asense of depth or immersion of where your at; which you may need to watch an online video of a full play through of the game to get a grasp of what that is or even remotely understand what I'm talking about. If it makes any RPG folks also feel better, there are no bosses mid games, when you enter dungeons and plundewr it fully, there is no big bad to fight you until the end of the game at the true FINAL BOSS! Which considering how hard it is to level, it's kind of a blessing in disguise in a rough sense, your breaking from a norm, but in order to balance the game's battle system... Kind of sad for folks like me that like good boss fights in RPG's like this. The counter though to that is THE BATTLE BACKDROPS ARE AWESOME AND REMINISCENT OF THE FUTURE GOLDEN SUN PROJECT... AND SUIKODEN!

Aside from the odd combat, the stats are straight forward and if you like Dragon Quest, you'll be able to pick this up and feel right at home.

As for the Story? The story isn't a lot to write home about; You play as a teenager, training to be a knight after the death of your mother and discover you are apart of a prophecy to bring balance to the world after Warlocks and Mages from the underground begin something to try and reclaim the surface from the 'beings of light' being the humans and people living on the surface than underground... Aside from that last bit being slightly interesting, that's about it as far as basic story lines go; you go on an adventure, meet friends, build a party, learn about them, love them and hate them all the way to the end and 'beyond.' And yes, I am aware of people groaning at these terrible jokes.

The entire game Feels like a REALLY GOOD RPG being stuck between a rock, a cinder brick and a playstation 1; more like an expiremental game to pave the way for future projects or a 'PRE-GOLDEN SUN EXPIREMENT TO SEE IF WE CAN DO AWESOME STUFF' because some of the stuff in Beyond the Beyond, I remember seeing and playing through in Golden Sun from similarish puzzles to how the battles we're setup. This was more or less a project for what comic book writers, artist's, game developers and so on do; they make it to prepare for their dream project. If not their dream project, at least to learn what they've made, learn from the mistrakes of the project and become more from it.... Or that's how I at least see it.

If I had to rate the game, it's a rough jewel like Ocean Horn. Unprocessed, hard and rough around the edges, a lot, but has a lot of potential to be something more.

... NEXT POST WILL BE ON SOME SHINING FORCE GAMES!!! Not 1 and 2 on the Sega Genesis; going to try and hunt down the 3rd LOST SHINING FORCE!!!.... Or do something on Phantasy star.

 

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Altitude​

There's nothing much to Altitude. It's basically a 2D shooter where you control a plane and jump into an arena to do various games together from 2D Dog-Fight's to lord knows what else such as capture the flag or destroy the base in Red Vs. Blue Matches. The Game is free on steam though there aren't any player's playing it right now or at all.... So why am I bringing up this dead title? Going through school and growing up as a kid who had unrestricted access to the internet, Steam was getting some stuff setup for their online shop and I didn't have a summer job yet or at all. I could only browse and play whatever valve gave away for free at the time and 'Altitude' was one of those games. I couldn't afford Team Fortress 2, or Half-Life 2... I couldn't even afford Portal or the first Half-Life! This was all when most of this stuff cost between $15-$50 and most of this was relatively new at the time and I understood nothing about torrents at the time, so I took what I could get for free.

And this title helped fulfill most of those night filled hours. The control's we're tight, it had enough game modes to satisfy my curiosity and it was a lot of fun; players who still played this dinosaur of a game we're fun to play with over the different modes and mods they made on their server's. If your a programmer waiting for stuff to compile and got nothing better to do, I recommend checking this title out and give a bot match a try. It's not no Crimson wings or Starwars or Galaga or R-type; but it's just mindless fun for the sake of being fun and free on steam.

Satellite Reign​

OK, This title, it's developers had balls of Steel and Brass to do what they did and they get no recognition or credit, I don't think a lot of people know about this title.... I want to shed a little light on this beauty of an abandoned title.

The story behind Satellite Reign's Development was that it was a kickstarter project, crowd-funded. The developers made several promises about the game if they could meet their goal. Sadly, they never did meet their goal of what they needed... So they did what most people never thought they would do.

They developed the game anyway.​

9.9 times out of 10, you see a kickstarter project try to take off and if it's a game that doesn't have funding, it flop's and either never releases or we get a jagged ended release of what the developers promised.... In most of the cases I've seen; I'll admit I'm wrong if that's not the case, but this one stands out above that because they did more than develop the game; they finished it.

No loose end's, no major bugs I'm aware of, no missing models or graphics, they took what they got from kickstarter and built the project in full including all of the promised features, including features they promised in stretch goals. They released it for free grabs on Humble Bundle even to get things rolling to show the game existed and even allowed folks to play it for free! DRM free-ness, no steam, no other clients.... For a time. It's now on sale at a regular price and can still be bought from Steam, Gog and even Humble Bundle.

What is the game like? Take Blade Runner; the first good Sci-Fi flick and merge it with a Co-Op Xcom Enemy Unknown while eliminating the need for turns and make it a full-action like MOBA Like League of Legends or Dota 2... And I've played through it. As odd as a combination as it is, it doesn't deserve the treatment it sounds like it deserve's. Palying single player is a pain, but the feel of the world, the characters you control for your own means and the whole open-world feel of it; targeting who you want to target as a group, puling off cyber-punk sci-fi heist's like the Major from Ghost in the Shell or Tron or rather a program from Tron going rouge just to kick ass. It's actually a lot of fun. If you can get 3 other friends to join you, one each to control a unit and it's spedcial abilities, the game's fun factor really opens up; you plan your movements together and strike when you need too and retreat to reconvene at a bar or back alley when the heat is on and the police both authority and corporate begin to hunt your hides down as you plan to overthrow them and dominate the city..... It's actually kind of awesome!

There isn't much to the story other than your a company or group of badasses who come into possession of conscience-transferring-body-jacking and cloning technology where you want to use this technology for corporate espionage for domination of the city and you use this to your advantage. Hiring scientists to help build better gear, research this technology more, finding specimens to splice their DNA strong points into your clones to do more better and awesome things such as taking more hit's from bullets or hacking computers faster or reduce the recoil of weapons.

It get's deeper in depth, but the rest, I want to leave to you gents and lass's, the player's. IF you find a vid of it and then play it; Ya either like it or hate it, but I at least give my respect's to the developer stating that this was their dream, something they wanted to make and publish; even if they didn't have the funds... And they succeeded... I want to at least give them some recognition for their efforts.

 

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Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
NES​

OK, When I couldn't find many Abandoned, unheard of game gems from 16-bits and up such as the wonderful SNES and Sega Genesis.... and an ocean of Dream Cast games. I instead went looking into the 8-bit library of games and started looking further back until I came across this gem.... Before anyone ask's, this game at retail in used shops today is over $100. → A NES game you better be able to pay with that $20 subscription fee you give to nintendo for your online gaming on the switch. Sadly you can't, So I took my chance's to play the game like the rest of the internet because nintendo tends to ignore their fan base in order to explore NEW AVENUES OF GAMING! SUPER MARIO PARTY WITH WAGGLING JOY CONS AND MULTI-SWITCH SUPPORT! *Insert excited japanese kid going 'OOOOOOOOOH' here*

Getting to business, what is this title? It's..... How do I describe it... If Monkey Island went to japan in order to try and start a family with the game Deja Vu, but instead with Dark Gate and tried to raise it's kid to eat other varieties other than vegetables before abandoning this family to move back to the USA, bringing this kid with it... I don't know how else to describe it.

The game, based on it's title, sounds like a little girls game and RPG mixed into one, but that's not the case. There is no RPG element in this title nor is there a back-up save battery to save the ram. This is basically an adventure game where your actions of that you can do in a scene are limited to simple button pushes, such as look, move, give, dump, talk, check and so on. An Example, you meet a dying melon child in the road. 'CHECK' him to discover he needs water. Got to a lake and 'TAKE' the lake to get 'WATER' in your inventory and take it back to that child and 'GIVE' water. The game assumes what you want to do and will save the kids life... So in terms of puzzles, put two and two together, the game will fill up the rest.

"Well, that's all well and good, but is there even any fighting?" You might ask.... and there is. There are several sections where you do fight an 'encounter' with another vegetable or fruit like the colorful character on the box art; though battles aren't what you think they are; they are just 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and you gotta guess where your opponent is going to look, up, down, left or right and that's it.

".....THAT'S IT?!?!?!?" Quite..... Though before you do a somersault of rage, the battles aren't the main focus of the game, it's the game's charm and story.

A prime example would be 'Earthbound.' A critically acclaimed game from Japan and back to the USA with fans of kids to grand-father's-mother's alike. The game has flaws such as the inventory, buying healing stuff in bulk, limited inventory and the puzzles requiring waiting among other items, but you over look all of those flaws with characters, monsters you fight toe to toe and other trippy experiences.

This title is the same way. The lands is riddled with 'Farmies' which are farmers who eat the 'vegetable' people, though they want to be carnivores, the kingdom was overthrown by 'minister pumpkin' who has stolen the magical precious turnip amulet to have his son marry princess tomato, your prince cucumber who was promised the princess to begin with, there are cherry birds and....well, this is a trippy experience to begin with; almost as if a trippy experience was influenced when this title was developed on the story boards, Everything is just insane in more ways than one and the game just has that whole charm about it! It knows it's ridiculous, but it's fun to play through and solve the puzzles to see and meet more of these characters to see how far out there their world goes. This game is sort of like a precursor to Earthbound and the Dragon Ball franchisee!

How does Dragon Ball fit in with this?..... Kakarrot and Carrot? Vegeta and Vegetable? In Dragon ball super, the Sayians original home world, if I recall correctly was Planet Salad.... WE NEED TO GET TEAM 4-STAR TO PLAY THIS!! DO A RENEGADE FOR LIFE ON THIS OR GOKU's GONNA SHOW YOU!

Next title is from a Sega Genesis title..... And it's from a Copyright-themed franchise like Mickey Mouse, but this one is unique in the sense of how it was made and the big question of why wasn't it on PC...

 

[Quto]

Scooby Doo Mystery
Sega Genisis
​

Time for another 'commercial game' with an interesting spin. In the back of the world, buried under a box of Sega Genesis Cartridges, being sold at your local yard sale or Flea Market for $5.

Scooby Doo, A crime solving dog with the 80's where they had to compete Speed buggy and that one other one that was a band with the Shark doing the same but with more slap-shtick where the budget with the show was the equivalent of a sandwich which you can pick up from the creepy guy on the block who you don't make eye contact with, you pay him that $2 for a sandwich... Because it's a really good sandwich... The secret is garlic aoilli....

And has survived the test of time in more ways than one. I mean, we already got Scooby Doo merchandise from sleeping bags, to fruit snacks, to a revised and respun TV show with more iterations than you can rot your mind over and of course, video games... There are just a ton of Scooby Doo games, some do well in becoming pointless collect-a-thons, some do ok with get from point A to B in a level in platforming and others are just.... What was the thought process? Scooby Doo on the SNES treated like an Arcade game? Only big enough for 2 mysteries!? Why?! And Scooby Doo on the N64 after you cheat your way to chapter 3 and discover the Volcano room has no fraking light and is so pitch black, you think it was black to save memory space on a room they NEVER BOTHERED TO TEXTURE AND MAKE THE GAME DIFFERENT?! COME ON! THAT'S LAZY PROGRAMMING!

Then you have this gem where the folks at Acclaim and Sunsoft did an iteration in the sense to make it about solving a mystery from the cartoon show.

And to be honest, I'm actually generally surprised. The whole game is basically a point and click title where you take the time to solve a basic mystery, just like out of the TV show... Almost. The puzzles are complex and unless you have a rough idea how to get around or where to click, you'll be busy trying to figure things out, like you would in Sam and Max hit the road. Though I would give this title a slide on puzzle difficulty since given the time period, all games here were difficult.

​

The game contains only 2 mysteries and given the memory size on a Sega Genesis Cartridge with no save feature, that's all you'll really get. The mysteries take place at a Hotel in the Mountains and a Carnival... Which I'm kinda sick of, I get that Carnivals are creepy and easy to squeeze jokes into this franchise to where it's a staple, but it get's tiring in my opinion... MOVING ON! How do you interact with a game like this? Well, it's got an interact mode and an explore mode. You 'explore' by moving Shaggy around using the D-pad and Scooby follows up behind you. Press a button to go to interact and your cursor is brought up, which you can use to pick up and steal items, find clues and use them in general puzzle solving to advance the game. After some general experimentation, you get use to it.

I don't have much else to say about this title except that it's using a Scumm Engine layout.... Which, to put into terms for people who don't wanna google it or are too lazy, it was an engine you could make point and click games on, it's outdated today but it was incredibly popular among game companies back then who had the time to make the art and the hit boxes for game titles such as Monkey Island and the Indiana Jone's PC games. If you want to run this game through Scumm VM, you won't get far since though this game uses an engine like it, it's another system they don't want to compile and stack ontop of this one. No offense or hard feelings to them, since your talking about re-purposing an old outdated game engine for newer and newer machines to be able to play these outside of their normal platforms and adding a Sega genisis game or taking the game apart to rip the graphics and put it into a newer system is a lot of work that can take month's to years to pull off. Your better off getting the Sega mouse to use with this title or better yet, see if there is a Sega Emulator that support and will allow your mouse to be used as a Sega Mouse Add-on... Which if you prefer to use a regular mouse, and can't afford one which I can 100% understand, I would recommend piracy of some form.

Now if only someone would take the time to do a remix of Hello Cyberdream from scooby Doo and the Cyber Chase.

 

[Frequency]

Aight, so I don't know about the rest of you guys. But WAAAY back in the PS2 days, I was a big fan of the older arcade games. So you know I had to nab the Sega Classics. Fantasy Zone was a secret gem that I could not have expected to be as good as it was. It was like...the most childish shmup you could get, but it was the most fun shmup I had ever played at the time. The game is GREAT. And back in the 80s when it dropped, it was great. Great difficulty curve? Check. A in-game SHOP? With crazy upgrades? Check. Wonderful visuals and sound? Check. What more did you need?

...Unfortunately, arcade games at the time were pretty much flying under the radar, despite a LOT of them being good. So not a lot of people outside Japan even knew about this game, even though in Japan it was MAD successful. But blessed be anyone with access to...well, ANY console that connects to the internet, since it's been ported to like a gajillion consoles. Pretty sure you can get it for like $5 on the Virtual Console. I can't say it aged well, but it's some really good fun for the low.

 

[Quto]

E.Y.E.: Divine Cybermancy
PC​

Hello Folks, I went back into the steam works and decided to try to find some online Co-Op and found an old FPS I use to play with a few friends. In fact, you can still get this from Steam's store if you chose to.

In E.y.e. you play as a warrior-cybernetic-enhanced-DNA-shifting-weapon-gun-slinging-RPG-towing-magic-casting-trap-setting-bad-ass-fighting monk, and your order of monk's hunt demons, living ones from SPAAAAAAAAAACE... THIS AIN'T DOOM BOY, YOU AIN'T NO MARINE! YO THE BULLET PROOF MONK ON STEROIDS DEVELOPED BY CHUCK NORRIS!!!... To be serious, All of that above is not a joke. You play as a monk where when you begin the game; pick genes to splice into your characters body to give certain body upgrades. You have a large array of guns to pick from to specialize in. You have cybernetics built into your body with an interfacing hud, comms an so on, allowing you to hack, shift do multiple taks. You hire scientists to research spells and Alchemy to send back to you to convert useless weapons on the field into healing items, ammo, and a bunch of other handy stuff. Your cybernetic body can be upgaded to run faster, jump higher like the million dollar man except you are that man. I could go on for hours here, but I'll leave it at that.

OK! So your this a Monk which happens to be a cross between a replicant from Blade Runner, a Terminator from it's own film franchise and... Any badass from any martial arts, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee and so on. You belong to an order of Monks and wake up from a botched mission with your comrades all dead around you. You head back and discover there's an internal civil war between your order and another monk order. The other Order, lead by a bigger guy whose name I can't pronounce wants power and to control the Order your apart of. The teacher who trained you how to do stuff want to flip that guy off and merge both Order's peacefully in order to do what they both set out to do, kill demons and stuff and your Order is dealing demons and that guy. You can pick who to support on your own as you travel to try and settle the dispute, putting out fires that the other Order starts while trying to help stabilize the situation.

How the game plays, on the surface, it's a full blown FPS with basic rudimentary RPG Elements, kinda like Fallout. In the depth's of it, you'll find walls of text and a learning curve... a very steep learning curve, like a wall. I said above you pay scientist's to research your stuff, Aside from paying them the $$ and waiting for that research to finish, you need to link your spells, tools and other stuff you learn from them to a complicated hotbar, which is a wheel you have to customize otherwise you have to open your menu in battle and click on the spell you want to use.

To add more onto that you level for the kills you make for the name of your order. Which earn you points to upgrade your spells or the cybernetics to your body, kinda Like Dues Ex.

After that, it becomes a 'Where the **** do I go' game from there. You got markers that tell you the direction of where you need to be, distance included too, and all accessible from your hud. However, half the places you need to reach require a lot of puzzle thinking and map navigating, a spot that might be 100 feet up off the ground might require a 400 feet journey through the back alley to find a staircase and another 400 feet back to the front on the rooftop where the marker indicates if that makes sense.

So of all of this; is it really worth playing?... Technically, yeah. I mean, the learning curve is steep, but there are tutorial videos in the game and on youtube. And it took me about 30 minutes personally to get use to the hot bar they have setup, but after a while with friends, I overcame that obstacle and started sling alchemy magic to get us ammo on the fly while creating a force field with the other. After that, the world is your playground and those who oppose you are challenges you can't wait to take on.

I do recommend beating this game fully because of what happens at the end after your last mission. I also recommend that, before you bring friends into the game to tackle the hotbar system among other items on your own and teach it to friends joining so they don't succumb to the massive walls of text on how to play. I hope you have a blast!

 

[Quto]

Jade Empire

PC, Xbox, Xbox360, Android, Ios
Bioware
​

With Bethesada under a microscope, constructed by Nasa, funded by Elon Musk, FORGED WITH MATERIALS FROM THE PROPERTY OF HATE BY THE HATE OF THE INTERNET, Which the web comic property of hate is an good read through, AND Identified by the lawyers who get USA Politicians off the hook for any charge including murder and larceny that would make Soulja boy's console scandal look like a speck of dust in the grand scheme of things.... I avoided buying Fallout 76 and decided to play some of their older titles so I went digging to see if there we're obscure titles... The most obscure I could Find was the Red Guard; An Elder Scrolls Adventure and Sea Dogs, two games I don't have my hands on nor have I ever played them before in my life to give my 2 cents... With Christmas coming around when I made this post, I can't even afford these titles off of Gog!... Well, I found Red Guard but I didn't find Sea Dogs.

SO! I decided to look at their competitors, Bioware; a team of programmers who have given Bethesda a run for their money. With classic's such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic I & II, the latter of which was modded by the community to be good, Baulder's Gate I & II, Sonic the Hedgehog and The Dark Brotherhood or THE GOOD SONIC RPG, Dragon Age 1, Mass Effect, Shattered Steel, and Jade Empire.... Which I'm covering today.... Why am I not including anything Beyond Mas Effect II? The bane of video game development bought them out around 2010 when Mass Effect 2 was developed... May EA suffer for everything they wrought.... And while I'm on burning companies, I give credit to Konami's Programmers, those guys love to develop games and so on, it's those in management that need to be dragged out into THE STREETS OF JAPAN A HUMILIATED PERMANENTLY!..... OK, Putting that rage aside, let's focus on Jade Empire.

Push 'X' to punch and kick ass.​

In the game, you have your choice of several pre-made characters, each with stats to perform specific Martial arts... Or rather, a character who can cast spells and use magic more efficiently or one who can punch things harder and use weapons like a warrior.... Like Might and Magic Live Action.... Except better. You can also opt to make your own custom class, Which I did, I fed into my focus stat and health and moved on, where I could do Slow-Mo 75% of my fights in the start and beat up everything.... Which Ill get into later. From here, the game starts where you fight a match against a fellow student in a friendly spar. Your teacher calls you in, your rival treats you like dirt for being a teacher pet; you learn hes a brilliant strategist for an evil empire, you have a destiny to fulfill in restoring balance and go out to fulfill that balance...Then you can go out and be pure good or pure evil, picking the path of the open fist or the path of the closed fist... Which the philosophy behind them both is interesting, The open palm is being the hero and helping the weak when they can't do stuff. The closed fist is more along the lines of leaving the weak alone and not helping them, but encouraging them to get past it so that they themselves can get stronger to get past their next strife without having to help them again, even if it kills them.... But this ain't philosophy, this is a game list and review of obscure games and a fat guy paying Omage to old titles soon to be forgotten in the throws of time and memory like Skies of Arcadia and Golden Sun.

"GO MY NINJA BREATHREN RIP APART IT'S ARMOR SO I CAN WEAR IT AND BE THE LEAD ACTOR IN OUR NEXT KABUKI PLAY!"​

... To be fair, the game opens up in the sense of a BioShock game or the soon to be middle finger to Bethesda, The Outer Worlds, you have access to different area's where quests are localized or places you can come back later to finish, stuff changes based on what ya do in the quest where some stuff becomes accessible and other stuff doesn't and stuff is pretty basic, be straight up evil, straight up good or don't care and fight though, no complexities on what's the greater good or evil like Dues Ex does after their latest release where it fuddles morals so much that it becomes trouble to even keep playing at the climax... Which I really don't care; there's a time for philosophy and a time to just play a game for fun and to be whoever the game we want to be in that game, villain or hero; NOT BE JUDGED BY THE SOCIAL CLASS OR YOUR OUTLOOK BASED ON WHAT YOU PICK! Moving on..... You go out and fulfill the destiny, whatever it is... restore the balance of nature or mess it up, just for kicks.

And your getting fist, and your getting a fist, and your getting my sword shoved up somewhere, and your getting a fist!​

How does the game play?... It players like an action hack and slash where the martial art's kinda makes the game feel like Power Stone, but more focus and more action such as dodging, guarding, AoE spells and attacks... Kinda like an old fashion kung-fu action film such as Fist of Fury or Enter the Dragon. You can even slow down time!!! SLOW ATTACKS TO GET ATTACKS SQUEEZED IN TO DO THAT FAST PUNCHING EFFECT IN 'B'-RATED KUNG FU FILMS! You also get an amulet which let's you tweak your character in terms of stats in numbers or to do weird and strange feats. You can attain followers which can help you fight or change your fighting style, become you traveling merchant to sell you stuff on the go or sort of 'date' to do things with them while adventuring by fulfilling a side story or something along the way of your journey to the Jade Empire. You can also learn different Martial Art styles and improve them as you level up to do more damage, improve your time-slow ability or resource use.... Such as using less magic or less 'focus.' And my favorite style out of this game is the 'White Demon' Style... I don't know why, if it's because I like the movements or the description they gave it or the damage and certain priorities it has over certain styles.... Eh, oh well.

Who is this ET you speak of? I'm an ancient demon sworn to guard your life. Is this ET your Enemy? I will consume it.​

This game was originally out for the Original Xbox and PC, before the SPECIAL EDITION DROPPED FOR PC... Which is kinda fun, add's more fighting styles, more weapons, quests and fun stuff to do. Then they released it for Android and iOS so you can play this on the go... Which I did on my phone and got my android controller because the touchscreen control's are terrible.

It's still fun, and I wanted to pay omage to it.... When I get some funds, I'LL BE PLAYING SOME RED GUARD, SEA DOGS, I'll write about them.... unles then, I'm heading to Archive to see if I can find the MS-DOS game file for Shattered steel.

 

[Quto]

Discworld
PC​

I went digging back through the old Game Archives and found a series that's.... Actually gathering dust... a lot of it; more dustier than your 1st edition of Dungeons and Dragons passed down to your from whoever. Before I go into about the game; I want to explain Discworld a little. Discworld is, more or less, when you mix dungeons and dragons with lord of the rings, Monty Python, the comedians from RiffTrax and a giant turtle into a blender... So what is this exactly?

Discworld is a book series similar to the Wheel of Time, Pendragon or the Harry Potter books, following the different lives of the denizens of this world is flat; carved into a Disc, mounted on the backs of four Elephants clung to the back of a giant turtle! Swimming through space and time!.. Well,

[S-HIGHLIGHT]Mostly Space![/S-HIGHLIGHT]

[img]https://2static1.fjcdn.com/comments/Blank+_028870f6833231edd022a8e85be59512.jpg[/img]

Each book chronicles something crazy or funny as the story follows the denizens who live there, such as the Grim Reaper who just shows up on the world as people die and does the weirdest things while waiting on their time to run out, such as reading a book, handing a guy a match in a room full of flammable liquid to help him/her see or attending a party of their worlds mythological version of something another, the tooth fairy, Easter bunny or 'soul cake duck.'


I was able to find the TV mini series while scrolling through Amazon, looking up some Christmas movies for kicks and watched 'Hog Father.' I started a small search and discovered the book the mini series was based on running a ways back. So I went looking again and discovered they did an adventure series of games based on these books.

The plot of the game, your a wizard named 'Rincewind' who's main job is to get rid of a dragon, brought to life by magic to Terrorize the town. Your a lousy wizard however, as you go to the Dean's Office at the university where you study magic and are instructed to find the spell book to get rid of dragons and everything else becomes a fetch quest to get rid of the dragon... I mean you get the book, but the wizards decide who take's the credit, Ricnewind decides to prove he's a great mage to fight and de-summon the dragon himself.

... There's nothing much else to tell beyond this, it's a basic point and click game; there are some good jokes, good comedy, good everything; it's a series that's been left to the ebbs and edge of time and a series that just needs to be played while it's still here. You can't buy the game anymore to my knowledge with the current outlets of media like Steam; BUT, the game should be available on the Archive to play online and I'm not a man to advocate piracy, but for a title like this? Old, nearly forgotten and cast out to the edge of the internet in some lost portion of the world, you might find some old files of it buried somewhere and can dig them up. If you played the game and heard of it, then good for you, you played a portion of a funny but interesting series, and this entry on my list is just for those who come after us looking for something else to fill the time.

They also published Discworld 2 for the PS1 and Discworld Noir afterwards, so there is some good content here. I recommend looking into it.

 

[Quto]

PAIN
PS3​

I want to talk about another little hit that's not very well known. PAIN!... Before I get any head scratchers about me breaking traditional format of 'LOOKING FOR GAMES WITH FEELINGS AND STORY AND STUFF TO TREAT AS AN EXPERIENCE,' there are the traditional arcade like games to where there is no story. Your the guy or girl playing as a character to do one thing and if you do it well, you get points for the effort you put in. Much like Smash TV...... But THAT title is a story for another time.

This title is about, what nostalgia critic would the source of all comedy, causing as much pain and destruction to your rag doll character as possible by flinging yourself at stuff. Such as, flinging yourself at a massive bowling ball, getting crushed by that bowling ball, and that ball falling out of place, rolling into traffic causing an infinite car wreck that blocks the entire block of traffic... Or DE-railing a train, only of have it land on an exploding box and, because of early 2004-2007 game engine physics, send in launch into the air, out of bounds to where it isn't coming back until reload the level. So much descturction was in this that the developers added a cam-corder function to this game at some point to give the players the ability to record their pain attempts and post them on youtube! No capture card required! Just fling, hit the edit button after the attempt, setup the camera shots in the video, hit action and it would compress and shove the video on your PS3 hard drive, which from here, you could upload it to youtube for kicks!

"...Is that all you do Quto?" YES!.... You want more?... Well, what all can you do with characters you fling stuff at? Well, they had some fun multiplayer mode, such as Fortress, where you fling your character at castles to knock those castle off. Fun with explosives is to cause as much destrution as possible when they litter the levels with explosive....and I mean litter, as in you can't walk or hover 3 feet without seeing another new bomb there. You got horse, call an object and try to hit it, core attacks and Pinball... Yes, Pinball using rag doll mechanics.

They also had several environments to cause chaos. An indoor amusement park with a volcano and roller coaster. A movie studio where they're recording a 'cape' flick using an alien and you interrupt the shot for kicks. Area 51 with aliens and labs, it's a lot to actually do.

NOW FOR THE DOWNSIDE OF WHY I DON'T THINK THIS DID AS WELL! With the exception of any freebies given to you by promotional ads or other, you have to pay for everything like you would in a DLC ad. *Insert getting punched* The first level and the log flume are free as well as Jarvis your first painful character and the underpaid cow fast-food worker which you earn, but the character's and the levels, you need to pay about $2-$5 each... So $2 for each character ranging from a cheerleader to an ugly mime and $5-$7 ranging from a sing level to a level pack where its 2 levels in one... Without looking, you would probably pay about maybe, $40-$70 to own everything, I paid the bare minimum just for the levels and picked up a few free promotional characters such as the 'Fat Princess' from Fat princess, Daxter from Jak and Daxter and when 'AXE' or the folks who provide most of the men of the world some spiffy but ok deodorant, got the PAIN version of their character. Putting on axe while flying to his doom in mid-air.

I also want to note when I got my PS3 for the first time, this game was given away for free for a short time before going to disk. So it was my freebie before building up my own library of PS3 games. Before sign off, I may start looking into forgotten titles of downloadable games from these consoles... However the only good oens remember finding we're ones like Fat Princess and a handful of PSP mini's such as 'A Space shooter for 2 bucks!' which, and I'm not joking, the developer made a deal with Sony that this particular title had to be worth 2 dollars flat, and to adjust the PSN store tag to made up for the amount of taxes to pay to make sure it would only be worth $2 flat.... and it's a load of fun.

Though I grew up my teens on PS3 and never dabbled much in Xbox or the 360 digital titles and I know there we're tons of them on that end.... Anyone growing up on the 360 with obscure D/L titles we may never see again?

 

[Quto]

Fat Princess
PS3, PSP

I am not sure if this game would 'fly' in today's world... So I'm going to talk about it anyway and cry as this beautiful game was flushed down the drain...

Enjoy the chibi blood and mayhem below.

FOR THE HORDE!~ THE DELICIOUS CAKE CALLED THE HORDE!​

OK, this was, for a good time and a long time, this was one of those games that was a download-only title. What was this game about? It was the most ridiculous game of capture the flag ever created... I am not kidding. The flag? Your princess. The objective? Rescue her from those jerks in the other castle. You have those Jerk's Princess to boot as well... Feed her cake, make her harder to carry back to the castle... Your enemies will do that too unless they slim down from not being fed.... YOU ARE SLAYING THEIR HEADS IN THE NAME OF THE KINGDOM! *Insert fan fare*

... To be serious, both teams have the others princess, your trying to steal your princess back while making it harder for the other guys. You start off as peasants, where upon picking up a hat to wear, you change your class. You got warrior, mechanic, mage, priest and archer and each of these classes can be upgraded to do certain things with the exception of peasant.... because you start as a peasant, even on re-spawn.

The Warrior is your average grunt or player who can kill stuff faster by being up close and personal with a sword and shield; his upgrade can let him carry a spear (I think it's called a Kaiser) which can stab stuff and has a short distance charge attack.

The Mage is as it sounds, players can fling fire and the upgraded form let's them toss potions... Or fling ice it's been ages since I been back to those old battle fields.

The Priest can heal players around him/her one at a time or all at once. The upgraded priest can steal life from their opponents.

The Archer is as he sounds, bow and arrow, can strafe shots. Upgrade them to use a musket with a wider range and use the torches at the castle to shoot fire arrows.

The mechanic, These guys have the most important role in the game, they're the backbone of an entire game. They can build and repair doors to the castle to keep your enemy out, they upgrade your classes, can gather resources a lot better, pick up larger bombs... They're kinda important and if they can gather those first most important resources at the start, the rest of the game boils down to the players. I've seen other games and played games where that's not 100% the case when dealing with players who can fight with pure skill and win, but that was a rare exception every one in ten matches give or take... Skipping that, these guys upgrade, they can use mini bombs which deal a small amount of damage in a small area, their hat factory or where you equip the class from produces massive bombs once upgraded, so they can carry and plant those. These larger bombs can cause major damage to castle gates or to a group of players.

The Peasant... This is a class you can charge out into battle as is and it's not really recommended; unless you have guts and skill. They can punch, but not very hard. They are speedy on foot and can carry things quickly... Actually, a skilled player who can dodge things like a Japanese shooter set on brutal while on a unicycle and their controller was a guitar, not a PS2 Guitar heroes guitar, a real one, that player can beat a Capture the Flag match in about 5 minutes.... GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

Moving on, believe it or not, there is a single player campaign with a story in what would be a frag-fest.... which is a term from the 90's where a game is purely a multiplayer match whether team vs. team or free for fall. A pair of princesses go out into the woods together for kicks and find a cake growing out of the ground. Before questioning the logic, they decide to try a bite. After a bite, they start devouring the entire thing together until their father's find them both in such a state. The kings attempt to ban the cake until both princesses claim it's the only thing they'll eat, they come to the conclusion that the cake is probably cursed and don't know how to lift it. A few months pass and there's a prince coming around looking to marry a princess, the kings think that 'true love' would lift the curse and.... well, hilarity ensues. Backstabbing, bloodshed and kid napping 8-ways from Sunday to keep one princess out of sight of the prince in order to lift their 'cake' curse.

Aside from the basic capture the flag, there are other game modes. Just fighting the players, taking the castle, king of the hill and so on. You can customize your peasant soldier guy/girl thing and player with about 40 other players at once. 20v20.

The game did well to spawn it's PSP sequel, you could now play the game on the go, The story changes up, they've added some new modes for kicks and it's a lot of fun to play through. There isn't that much change from the PSP version with the exception of the new modes, but fewer players for the hardware to keep up with.

Then they released the 'Fat Roles' DLC and it's not so much of a 'fat' joke, more of a 'game' changer.

The inclusion of a pirate class, and a GIANT'S class, which can only be attained after upgrading one of the classes. There's a pirate hat you can attain after one of the classes upgrade and the giant's potion, which can be picked up, carried to the center of the battle field, drink it and become invincible while squishing the competition. There's also a ninja class and...... I think there's a king and a cook? It's been ages since I last played, I only remember the core classes so forgive me folks.

Update: Fat Roles Added a Pirate, a ninja and a giant. The Ninja and Pirates are basically Warriors and Archers mixed into one with a few key differences. The ninja can turn invisible via smoke bomb and the pirate can call down an exploding Cannon-ball bomb which can deal a lot of damage. The ninja leave invisibility when hurt or when they attack and the pirate needs to stay in the field alive to call down his cannon fire. Both of the can attack up close and personal while a charged attack fires either a wave of shurikens or a scatter shot from a rifle. The giant is just a temporary overpowered class which is brutal in it's own right.

Why am I dragging this title to the spot light? One, its current state on the PS4, isn't that fun.... or to me it isn't, last I checked, it's a dungeon crawl with loot crates you pay to open.... Before that on the PS Vita, it was a puzzle game with the same mechanics.... I prefer to play the version where it was blade, magic and sword and we we're fighting each other for cake or for kicks in the most cartoonistic method possible.... or bloody, it was a gorey-ish game with blood you could turn on or turn off if you we're squeamish. The PS3 store is still open, if you still got a PS3 console lying around, I recommend giving this title a play through.

 

[Quto]

Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
The Game
PS3, Xbox 360​

Ladies and gents, growing up, there must have been a lot of things going on for it to be one of them 'moments' to be alive... I'm breaking my tradition of a game you can obtain, because this one can't be attained anymore but I want it to at least be remembered like the rest of these titles.

Scott Pilgrim was a spiffy comic about a... well; a musician/average joe who falls in love with a girl or woman named Ramona, they hit it off, but she states they can't be together unless he defeats her evil Ex's... Or something along these lines; forgive me hardcore fans if I mess anything up, I never got a chance to read any of the books or see the film, I just learn about the source material for this one as I go... How their world works is... I suppose insane; Subspace doors, vegetarians who are psychic and a everything with some form of video game to pixel combat!..

I'm sure I haven't done this enough justice, but I can do justice to the video game. I bought into it + all of the DLC involved in it. So, here we go!

The game plays like a beat'em up where you follow the original plot to Scott Pilgrim, you go find the evil Ex's and beat them into oblivion... In the same way you would go about it in Streets of Rage, go up and punch the living daylights out of them. The game follows roughly the same structure of a Streets of Rage game, Beat-up everyone on the screen, move right to advance.

With each foe you slay, you gain experience and cash. You can trade the money for permanent upgrades like punching harder, better defense or temporary buffs and so on. You gain experience to mostly gain buffs and stat increases, but to also unlock new move's.. Such as, you start with a punch and kick with jumping. Next level, you learn how to block, next level you learn how to dodge roll, then back step and so on..... Kinda like Castle Crashers... Except not as controlled as you want for stat point deviations.

Level selection and the entire aesthetic of the world is like an old NES Video Game or SNES, Even world selection is kinda like out of Super Mario!!!... And this is a game you don't have to play alone, grab friends, pull out the controllers from the closet hook'em up and go in beating everything you see into a paste of.... well, metal, blood and vegetables. 4 PLAYER CO-OP BABY!

Update: Something else I completely forgot, when it first came out, the game was local co-op only. The developer + the artist didn't want to do networking multi-player. At the time, the only thing multiplayer was just to have a PSN account, go online and play with your friends there. There was no fun in just going over to a friends house for kicks, pull out a spare controller and play together in Co-Op like Halo or in competition in.... Everything that supports more than 2 players like Mario Party, Mario Kart, Unreal, Golden Eye for the Nintendo 64, etc. It wasn't until near the end of this game's life cycle that they we're urged by their publisher to put in the ability to go online.

.... OK, so if this game is so AWESOME!? Why can't we play it anymore, like I said earlier?

... Licensing; between the point of release and the point it was yanked, there have been rumors going on to why the game itself was pulled from the market. Some say it was because the licensing expired, which I have a hard time believing since there are games with expired copy rights being sold digitally, namely Blinx the Cat on the Original Xbox when Microsoft never bothered to renew the license for the time traveling cat period.

Others say it's because the musical Artist's behind the chip tune soundtrack claimed because their political views didn't line up with the developers so they 'revoked' their rights to have their music played at all.... which I don't know if that's true...

Whatever the case, it's another reason I'm not a big fan of our new digital age where games and stuff like this can be gotten at a moments notice, the game you want is too volatile that it can be deleted without a second thought in the sense if you remove it to make room for a new game, you can't get it anymore and you have nothing to go back to it because someone doesn't want you too.... Though that's me griping about something else entirely about digital vs. Physical media's and I'm not going into a spiel about this when you can google it yourself and have 1/2 the internet yell at you... If you want my Two Cents, you can reach out to me personally and I'll answer.

Last I heard, the artist was fighting tooth and nail to get it re-released to be played again once more. Though until the real reason come out and it can be absolved, there's a good chance it may never be seen again. I just wanted to pay tribute to it here.

Update:
There is now a remastered version for Xbox One X|S, PS4 and Nintendo Switch, the game has yet to be yanked, has all the DLC among other feature's. Go have fun! This post was made before the Re-release was updated.

 

[Quto]

Serious Sam​

I want to talk about a PC game that has so many port's that it would give Rayman The Great Escape a run for it's money.... Almost.

Thing is, after playing 'KINGDOM HEARTS 3' which should have been the MOST ANTICIPATED RPG OF THIS YEAR only to DISAPPOINT ME... And I played through it fully..... Spoiler alert, there's no Colosseum, no Sepharoth Fight, no Final Fantasy Characters to interact with like prince/king Noct from Final Fantasy 15... It's just Disneyfied, as if Disney gave the director a solid gold truck with anything his heart wants such as A FREE INFINITE PASS TO VISIT DISNEY WORLD WHENEVER HE WANTS, ALL EXPENSES PAID ON THE MOUSE'S DIME HIMSELF.... Mickey.... Even to remain king.... Second spoiler, Flow Motion sucks, even in the world where it's encourage, they should have taken notes from Insomniac's Sunset Overdrive which is flow motion 100%, it's required...

.... ANYWAY, since I can't get my fill of fantasy violence in a non-disney world and I DELETED KH3 from my console hard drive... I returned to my PC and loaded up the 'B-Movie' of video games; Serious Sam.

Serious Sam isn't exactly an abandoned title like many on the list, but it's not really a game vastly talked about anymore... I dare you RIGHT now to search the video game forum for any mention of Serious Sam, the only result will be in THIS TOPIC, I DARE YOU ALL... Unless it is somewhere else... Example, when your playing on Xbox online, you playing battlefield or the newest call of duty. On your PS4, it's Blood Borne/Dark Souls or Monster Hunter. The Nintendo switch? Splatoon and Super Smash Bros. You ask a 10 year old or a preteen today if they want to play Serious Sam, they're probably assuming it's a game mode on one of these consoles... Well, probably not, but still.

It does deserve to be mentioned.​

So WHAT IS SERIOUS SAM?! ... To be fair and I'm not joking here, you could say it's the game Halo Ripped off of, though I could say it the other way around considering when the first announcement of halo was...

Serious Sam's Story is pretty basic. In the future, aliens come to attack us because we are finding technology left by another race making us more powerful. The guy leading the evil aliens want it so now we're now fighting a losing battle. Over the battles for earth, a guy named Sam was able to surpass and dispatch of the alien threat with little to no effort. We uncover an artifact called the time lock which allows us to and a single human back in time to anywhere we want... With the war not going in our favor, the choice was pretty obvious so we send Sam back in time to find something to stop the alien invasion.... Sadly, the evil alien sends back other aliens to try and kill us.... And that's just how it starts.

This sounds kinda familiar.... 2 aliens races, one leaving awesome artifacts for us.... another wanting to wipe us out for stuff.... THIS IS HALO! Except no recharging shields and that's the last time I use this joke and before I here people come to Halo's Defense, Serious Sam, the first Encounter came out in March 2001 while Halo came out in November the same year and there are a lot of differences, but the stories are more similar than we think... That and I enjoy both of these game's and the stories they tell for separate reasons which I'll explain at the end.

How does the game play? Like a traditional, strafing, FPS shooter like DOOM or Quake.... except it's just.... Well, fun. Fun in the same sense you watch the movie Airplane! or one of those goofy Arnold movies like Conan The Barbarian. You grow a pair, pick up a gun and try to kill the bad guy in front of you using several weapons from a sniper gun to pistols and dual wielding those pistols to the serious bomb... OK, So is that it mostly? Just slay waves and waves of enemies with guns?... Sort of.

There are waves and waves of enemies, there are also bosses 3 times your size and each opponent has, sort of, a separate A.I. in how the work. First enemies you fight are headless, yet somehow able to still scream, human/alien hybrids with shotguns and chainsaws. They are trying to get close to kill you. You then meet a Kamikaze headless thing where it will kill itself to do a lot of damage to you, a cow skeleton that charges and jumps at you to hurt you if he get's close enough. There is a male and female cyclops that do different types of damage. Frog things that are easy to kill and do AoE damage....

There's just a lot of enemies and there is no single wave, combination or encounter that feels the same... Temple has the charging cow skeleton tucked away, with little space to dodge, you have to fight it straight on with a shotgun or retreat to a wider space where you can side step, spin around and shoot it from behind.

Or you step outside, approach a sand dune/hill thing and a kamikaze is coming down, only 1 of them. You kill him, Sam says a one liner, "AAaaaah- yourself ya freak." and seconds later, there's an army of KamiKaze's coming out from over the head of the hill coming for you and Sam responds with 'Uh oh."

It's usually scenes and sections like this I love and Serious Sam is, in a rough sense, filled with them. Rather the first encounter is so far I've played. There are even super nerds with giant brains that look kinda like the big alien brains from 'Mars Attacks.' Where they hide is an area with a good start off set of power-ups and I laughed my head off after discovering they we're there and there was an achievement for just finding them.

... So the game has a lot of bits like this and it's a lot of fun to play... So why is there not even hide or hair of people talking about it? Croteam, the guys and girls who made this have been improving Serious Sam since it's first game.. The first and second encounter's have an HD edition which are both pretty cheap and setup to support wide screen, they have Co-Op supported where you and several friends can get together and play together in a single campaign or play alone; along with a multiplayer mode to just fight each other and the amount of ports? There's a GBA version, PC, PS2, PS3, XBOX360! EVEN THAT PALM OS WHICH CAME OUT IN 1997 AND ENDED IN 2007!!.... AND IT'S ON YOUR ANDROID PHONE AND iOS! THERE'S EVEN A SERIOUS SAM 4 PLANET BADASS IN PRODUCTION!

It could be because there is no story to this to discuss. It's a brainless, arcade shooter where there's cult references sprinkled here and there and your shooting everything. The game is older than Halo after a few months and between the two, people talk more about Halo and the next Call of Duty than this title.... or ANY OF THESE GAMES IN THIS LIST I AND ANYONE ELSE HAVE POSTED! GAMES THAT NEED SEQUELS OR HD REMAKES OR SOMETHING!

It could be because of the Serious Sam ad's weren't that...engaging with the people of today? Does NOONE APPRECIATE SENSELESS VIOL- Well, senseless violence is only good in dose's when your day is **** and you need to take the stress out on something without the consequences coming back to bite you back.

GET SOME! GET SOOOOOOME!​

My personal theory? I think we've just been spoiled with what we want or what the public wants. Example, The biggest, block busting, money making films in production are mostly 'cape' flicks of super heroes like Spiderman : Spiderverse and sequels to original ideas that came out a few years ago such as the new and third How to train your dragon flick.... Those are just movies; Game wise, you got Halo 5, 'the art complexities of a story behind Undertale, still played and explained today' along with delta rune and the next inspiring game from lord knows where else... We've become so use to that, the next best game is when things go different or takes a different direction in how the story acts, it's world in characters like the Scott Pilgrim game, it becomes the next big undiscovered thing.... or another Anime based game cheaply made or made with some to little and no effort. We can't even enjoy some of the simpler games or even the Coin-Op games like PacMan. We've been spoiled by big games and huge infinite imagination changing ideas that we can't enjoy the simpler or simplest of stuff...

Though that's just my theory, could just be everyone is tired of old games like this, even if they're renewed. I do recommend at least picking up the first game of Serious Sam: The First Encounter and giving it a try. It's a few bucks and it's a title that it's series not only survived over the years until today but may continue to exist for ages more to come. Just somewhere in the background of gaming, thriving like a creature in an eco system of it's own.

...Which brings me to why I like both Halo and Serious Sam. Serious Sam has little story, but it's pure action, there's fun stuff hidden, references to things I grew up with in the 90's onward's and it's just fun to fight an army of constantly changing enemies. Halo is more controlled and while they include aliens, the story is more in tone, has an epic feel of the super soldier taking on another world ending faction/ species and continues to span outwards to where instead of the constant waves, you can approach a fight going Rambo or going alone. One is fun to fight, the other is fun to experience, this is something you can write me an essay why I should like one more than the other and I could care less; I enjoy them both.... Hmmmmm...

We should get the guys from Death Battle to do a fight between Serious Sam and the super soldier Master Chief. WHO WOULD WIN?! THEY BOTH TOOK ON ARMIES OF ALIENS WITH A LARGE ARRAY OF WEAPONS!? WHY NOT?!

 

[Quto]

Tetrisphere​

I would like to talk about a 'rough' Nintendo 64 Classic called Tetrisphere, a game nintendo stole and power-housed it's original developers to make.... That's right, power-housed.... Selling the developers something illegal and more powerful than red bull.... coding 24/7 until it's done... And I want to note, that these are all jokes with the exception that they did power-house developers or speed up production and stealing the game.

So where do I begin? I suppose with, WHERE THE GAME CAME FROM! The game was developed by H20 Entertainment who was known for.... Nothing before this, Tetrisphere was their first game. After this, they developed 'The new Tetris' for the N64, a 4-player Tetris game and one of the few RPG's on the N64, Aidyn Chronicles... Which isn't talking about for specific reasons, mostly because I haven't played it myself but who care's! Another game for another day to talk about.

When I said Nintendo stole the game earlier, what I meant by that is that they pulled the same stunt Microsoft did to Apple. They bought the developer out from under Apple and released it as an exclusive on their new and straight forward XBOX. Here? It's the same thing, Tetrisphere was originally suppose to come out on the Atari Jaguar! Nintendo spoke to and bought out the rights to the game and had the team develop this title for the Nintendo 64 exclusively.... Actually, throughout the lifespan of H20 Entertainment, all they we're able to develop for was Nintendo until their untimely death... NOW FOR THE POWER-HOUSE!!! When Nintendo saw the game at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show of 1995, bought the rights and announced the game was suppose to be delivered and released for October of the next year which was 1996, this was a problem because the team was unaware themselves when they would release this title, especially on a new and different platform.... Which was a problem. For those who don't program, this sort of means your building your entire project from scratch, again in another country in a different language you haven't had time to study or learn. You can't port one game's work from one console into another just like 'that,' you have to recompile your game for one and another you have to make cutbacks to fit your game onto a new form factor and look at what the N64 could handle from blocks rendered to size and space you can shove onto the first generation of N64 Cartridges, your basically looking at a 2 to 2.5 year development cycle, shoved into one year.

Nintendo didn't like that the developers had to ask for more time when the deadline hit and the title wasn't even close to ready since they had to restart from the ground up, so they sent them some 'help;' about half the development team needed for a Nintendo 64 Game to put this game on a jetpack and power it's development cycle through to get the project DONE!... We will never know what happened there, but the developers stated they were not allowed to say what happened while under Nintendo's new management to get this done. Non-disclosure agreement, yatta-yatta-yatta.

This guy is scared of Nintendo.​

Why? Why would Nintendo, a creator who stated that good games take time to develop power house and make such a release date announcement on behalf of H20 when H20 wasn't even sure when they would be done?! The answer?! The release of the Nintendo 64... The Nintendo 64 Released in... September of 1996 and your only launch title or title's we're Super Mario 64 and Pilot Wings 64 for that month... You won't be seeing any fighter's such as Mortal Combat, Killer Gold or the Star Wars until November, Nintendo, probably, wanted this game to come out here as to pave a path of the N64's 'GREATNESS' or rather, expand the library as early as possible. In retrospect, I can understand, you have a new console out and you want to entertain the customer by selling as many of the games as possible.

MOVING ON HOWEVER! Onto the game play and story, cause any PUZZLE GAME BACK THEN HAD TO HAVE A STORY!!! Dr. Mario 64, Disney's Magical Tetris, Pokemon Puzzle League, etc.... What's the story? You play as one of the robots whole live on a distant world made of blocks who can take the form a ball and your hanging out with your friends... Who all get bored and decide to play hide and seek.

He will never find me here..... Snap, he found me.
​

.... I am not joking.

How does t he game play? Well, in regular tetris, you need to make complete full row's or blocks to clear them.... In Tetrisphere, you destroy the blocks using other blocks. HOW?! Well, if you got a square block and there's a square block on your sphere, line it up and hit that place block button. The block you placed will destroy itself and the block you targeted. You can also place blocks next to each other to destroy them and any other blocks lined up like this, above, below and right next too perfectly. Meaning if you got a luckily generated sphere, with a single block, you can wipe out a layer... IF you are that lucky.

You also get weapons like a firework, a nuke, a magnet and some other spiffy weapons to help you destroy blocks in mass. You can find these by destroying weapon block on your sphere or by getting a good and high enough combo.

What was the objective or a Tetrisphere game? Getting to the core of your sphere, you had to eliminate the blocks to get to the core and reveal portions of it to win whether large or small. This is, roughly, the same objective in 2 Player mode.... And that's not the only game mode.

In the Hide and Seek story.... Or the 1 player mode, They had other methods of beating the game to advance to a 'new' episode. Episode one, you had puzzle, which was getting to the core to find puzzle pieces and moving them to other pieces to finish the punzzle which was kind of cool. You also had Drill where you had to find a secret image hidden somewhere in the core on the sphere and they setup blocked you can destroy which let you get a peak at the core to find that image and you had one of my personal Favorites, the Tower.

Everytime you found ALL of the robots, you would advance to a new episode, and when this happens, the game modes get harder and introduce NEW game mode elements.... Example, First episode, your dealing with a tower, after Episode 2, which is finding them all twice, you have a new tower mode called the CRYSTAL TOWER! And it's a lot harder than it sounds. In the tower, your destroying blocks around the tower to uncover it's base in order to win. In the CRYSTAL tower, your completing the same objective with one exception, you can't destroy the tower. Not with weapons, not with other blocks.... In fact, the crystal tower is so fragile, it breaks if another block about to be destroyed is RIGHT BESIDE IT!!! So it's a lot harder to accomplish, let alone, beat. The game get's harder and provides newer methods to finish each level and... Well, this is kinda fun. For a game mode you play over and over, they make the next level more different and more fierce than the other.

You will fear the Crystal Tower.​

This game is actually quite fun to play through and if you have a N64 laying around, You might want to give this title a play through. Heck, you can literally pick up this game at a flea market for $5. It's not a HARD TO FIND SUPER RARE GAME!!!!! But it is a title nintendo had more of a personal involvement in it's development cycle and a game worth playing.

 

[Quto]

S.L.A.I.
PS2
​

Let's talk about a hard to find Playstation 2 game; ALSO ABANDONNED BY KONAMI! S.L.A.I..... Why call is that? I HAVE NO IDEA!

This game was more focused around ONLINE GAMEPLAY, much like MONSTER HUNTER or LEAGUE OF LEGENDS or...... FREEDOM WAAAAAAAARS!

This is a game I will admit I have never heard of growing up as a teen. I never saw it in my Gamestop, or my local Walmart or... anywhere. SO WHAT'S THIS GAME ABOUT?! It's Konami experimenting with Online Play on the Playstation 2 to see if they can make a hit and failed like Capcom and their MONSTER HUNTER ON THE PS2! Wait... why DOES MONSTER HUNTER LIVE- Monster hunter gained popularity the second PSP hit the scene and you could hunt with other's locally or online via Wi-Fi and that was something EVERYONE WANTED IN LIFE!!! EVEN AT YOUR LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL BEFORE SCHOOL OR AT LUNCH!

I'm Sad S.L.A.Ii never made the cut. Cause this is an awesome mech game to play! IT WOULD GIVE GAMES LIKE CALL OF DUTY A RUN FOR IT'S MONEY!!!!....heh, ok.

Ok, so what is this game mostly? It's a frag fest, which again, in the 90's was the term for a video game that focus's around multiplayer for it's entertainment to kill or fight each other in an arena of the players choice. Does it have a story?! YES!

Game on!​

It's the year 2046, Gamer's now HAVE A VR HEADSET and the internet is now a paradise you can walk around in, in the mostly jankiest and simplistic style available.... Reboot Style.... I mean, the hub where you do stuff from buying mechs to getting into your combat matches looks like it was pulled out of the loftiest dreams of Reboot... Actually, when you first enter the game, they stress test your hardware by loading a huge amount of simple 3D modles until your start to lag.... Kinda.... neat, I guess.

MOVING ON, You get your liscense to compete in the 'rumble' sport which involve the use of mechs or DIGITAL mechs and meet a journalist who is looking into the murder's of other gamers who take on other gamer's to rank up and be the best rumble player in the sport....

So how does the GAME PLAY YOU ASK?!... Not kidding, it plays incredibly well. The mechs have good speed and handling, movement is centered to your left stick and the aim cross hair to your right stick like a traditional FPS, NO TANK CONTROLS!!! You have 4 mounted weapons per mech, each one assigned to a should/trigger button, your mech has a cloak to go invisible a while, jets to jump, you can customize the paint job a little, combat is smooth as nutella and peanut butter, I ENJOY THIS! Not one bit of this game feels rough with the exception of the hub where you interact with the campaign.... Why are not more Mech games like this?! If we had more mech combat games where the gameplay was handled this smoothly, we could replace some FPS games with this.

As for the music?....Whoever was in charge of picking songs to fight too, they deserve an A+! None of the music in the game is composed, they signed on some artist's to use their music in this game and some of the music they've picked, I give my commendations. You have some Country Rock, punk Rock, classic, Japanse tracks which I don't know how to categorize and just.... a lot, if you pick up the title and go to the games shop 'Blood Music' - which I'll admit sounds like a badass music shop, you'll see what I mean.

I have never had more fun playing a mech game than this, This would put Armored Core to shame even to how well this plays!.... Well, to me, this plays pretty well. I recommend hunting this down if you have a chance and play through this title.

 

[Quto]

I have another title I dug up from my youth. With Bethesda burying themselves, EA getting ready to kill and gut Blizzard and everything else depressing about the state of the USA Industry in video games, such as Sony moving to California and strongly imposing BRAND NEW censorship rules which censor about... well, anything to where the artist's and creators can no longer speak their minds and my heavy disappointments with One Piece World Seeker... I decided to dig back through my old PC games i had on CD and found an old but good one I grew up with.

Dungeon Siege
PC​

If you grew up in the early 2000's and we're a PC gamer while waiting on the Gamecube, you may have heard of this title, this was one of the few action RPG games you could play alone or with friends over the internet and it embraced game mods, everything from wielding the master sword from the legend of Zelda to a Minigun with enough ammo to eradicate bosses in seconds. More or less, this wasn't so much of a rare game nor is it much of an abandoned title; more like this is a abandoned series after Dungeon Siege 3... Which if I remember correctly was the equivalent of having your gut punched over a lack of effort and acting like EA with Tony Hawk when their license on him was about to expire...

I AM WARRIOR ZUES, DEMI-DUDE OF DUNGEON KILLING!​

So I'll be taking about the first 2 titles. First off, the game itself and how you built your characters. Unlike today's RPG's where you could be the 'jack of all trades' when you put in the hours, Dungeon Siege punished players for this. You had to focus on a single class, you could dabble and build up your other stats some to cast basic magics, like a warrior with some nature-magic points to cast a healing spell if you went in single player. However in the end, if you spread the points too often, then advancing would be problematic and the stronger foes near the end of your game would slaughter you. I can understand that this can turn a lot of people off, especially those who are DEEP into games like Fallout where there is no level cap and you can be the wasteland equivalent superman or Goku or that guy from One Punch Man, Saitama...... Or another game like Final Fantasy 10's Orb system; which is kinda cool, but difficult when you want to max the ENTIRE BOARD.... So many game play hours put into that effort... Until you cheat your orbs in... How the game players, there isn't a turn-based system, it's a hack and slash title where you go up and hack and slash as fast as you can click or as fast as your character can attack with the weapon he/she has on hand... Or spell he/she can fling.

Moving on, though you can't be a jack of all trades.... because even in Dungeons and Dragons, that's ridiculous, you wold need a packet of papers of all the skills and spells you can use; keyword being packet... You can get friends to join you in multiplayer to even things out; like you traditional Dungeons and Dragons Party, A tank, a damage dealer, a healer and a mage to wipe out the annoying long range mobs or casting buffs like a fire ward. Which sort leads me to how multiplayer works.

So long as we leave the body on the other side of the boss room and get out of here, nobody will know what we did with Leeroy Jenkins.​

Multiplayer works in the same style as Two Worlds does. For those who don't know or would rather not pick up the controller to try that title, You basically create a character, setup a server via the game itself, invite up to about 8 of your friends in or less with their characters and your dumped into the game world from the start depending on the campaign you picked whether the original game or one of the Dungeon Siege expansion campaigns.... or custom campaigns from a mod site if they still make them.
Actually, if Fallout 76 used this concept along with some party based quests and not lazily try to make the game community based, then things may be more solid and they may not have a terrible product.... but I digress. You can setup games via traditional TCP/IP or using the now dead and defunct MSN Zone serivce... The later being an ancient proxy service if you had a DHCP and couldn't host the game traditionally or get port forwarding to work worth your life.

Now you may ask, what is the story of the game? In the first Dungeon Siege, your a farmer, tilling your peasant crops until Goblins attack your community. You stave them off and seek help in the neighboring village, from here and not to spoil so much, the plot evolves to where you just go and kill the big bad, which are some other-worldy creatures you don't find in common fantasy lore, demons if that's what you wanna call them.... Hearing that plot, I can imagine Jack from Harvest Moon 64 or Friends of mineral town doing the same thing over and over, having to remarry a new wife because goblins and spiteful creatures wrecked his farm in each iteration and takes revenge.... It's depressing and hilarious and would explain why we keep playing him in nearly every harvest moon... Eh. In Dungeon Siege 2, your a hired mercenary, hired by the legion wanting to dominate the land, your about to be sacrificed after discovering your not getting paid to fight and decide to just go after those guys.... Because you weren't paid and they we're about to kill ya.... Those Jerks!

Let's see.... I've robbed everyone in town... Destroyed the justice system and the monarchy and slayed the outlaying groups who sought to seize power.... And this took me 12 minutes... Ok, let's go kill the boss.​

This is, in general a fun title. Old, but there is still some fun to be had here. Epic battles with sword an shield, casting magic, going underground and spelunking tombs and caves with some puzzle elements. Traps and creatures; this is a basic Dungeon and Dragons more or less brought to life and a title I would recommend over Fallout 76 if you want an RPG you can play with other friends and people for kicks until Bethesda either dies out or something better comes along.

I know this isn't a rare game or one pushed so far out of the lime-light, but it's a title worth mentioning. I've a few original Xbox titles I've yet to play which haven't been heard of so bare with me dear readers of THIS LIST!.... Because this isn't easy as it's cracked up to be especially since the 1st post, I have self implied rules of what I do; I don't encourage anyone to follow them if there's something you want to post to give recognition.