I’m not really a traditional sports fan, but when something as outrageous as the Outlaw series passes under my radar, I have no choice but to pick it up. Outlaw Golf 2 is very mature, outrageous, and fun. What makes the series so outrageous are the characters, who range from mentally insane to sexually charged (such as Summer and Autumn). The game has a lot of modes, such as tour, exhibition, driving range, and a couple of mini-games.
The gameplay is pretty simple and plays like most other golf games, but with some twists. When driving down the green, you can switch camera angles to see where your ball is going to fly. You can change the power, and this is also adjusted upon swinging. The game has a swing stick setup, so swinging the analog stick is pretty accurate and not too finicky. If you time the swing right, you can go over 100% and do a power shot, but watch out because you overshoot where you want the ball to land. There are hazards to look out for, so you really need to watch out. If you start doing poorly, your composure meter will drop and bring it back up, and you can play one of two mini-games. These are golf cart games to get a perfect shot, or you can beat up your caddy. They are fun at first, but after a few tries, you get tired of them. One feature I like is that while you get three tries at a guideline, Hit square once, and you’ll see a line to the hole. One feature I love is the Gimme feature, which allows you to just press square during a putting replay to let you go ahead and sink the ball for an extra shot. This is only if your ball is almost in the cup and you didn’t quite make it.
I love the game’s mature commentary and smart alack remarks to the players. The intros and small animations of the characters are either funny or sexy. The best part about the game is that the mature content didn’t get in the way of the game being good. However, the game is very hard to beat, especially in tour mode. Even after trying over 10 times, I still couldn’t beat the first tournament against Killer Miller. You have to get ahead on the first hole, or you’re never going to win. Even if you factor in all the golf aspects like wind, elevation, etc., you still have a hard time winning.
The game looks pretty good, even for today. The courses look great, and the characters look great, so you have something nice to look at. The only issues I saw were some slowdowns due to the PS2’s limitations, but they didn’t hinder gameplay. Since the online servers are shut down (and there’s probably no one playing even if they weren’t), online play couldn’t be tested, but I’m sure it would have been really fun and competitive. There is a lot of extra content, like videos, outfits, clubs, and balls, so you have many hours of gameplay, and there are a lot of characters to play as well. If you’re tired of your traditional golf games, pick up Outlaw Golf 2, and you should have a good time.
I’m not really a James Bond fan, but I can’t help but pass up a good action game, no matter what the license is. Everything or Nothing is based on the film when Pierce Brosnan was still a famous spy, and Everything or Nothing is pretty solid. The story is pretty nonsensical and is your typical Bond plot with a bad guy (Willam Defoe) hell-bent on ruling the world. Diavolo has nano-mites that can eat through metal and plans on attaching payloads of this stuff to nukes. Bond runs into a henchman (Jaws) and a beautiful woman to stop the evil madman.
The best part is the vehicle sections, and the shooting sections are hard as hell and mundane. I’m going to throw that out there right now. The vehicle sections have Bond driving real-world vehicles with missiles, machine guns, flame throwers, and oil slicks attached to them. What makes the driving sections so grand is the sense of speed. Driving across a bridge, jumping through signs, and finding shortcuts to trigger “Bond Moments”. While these are hard to find (even in on-foot sections), they can be satisfying. Every driving section is different, from escorts to flying over rooftops to races. All vehicles handle very well, even at high speeds, and this is what truly matters.
The on-foot sections are mundane and extremely frustrating. Even in the easiest setting, the game throws dozens of bad guys at you, and ammo is a loot and hunt type thing. You start out with a puny P99 pistol, and the game throws about 10 bad guys at you. The lock-on feature is clumsy since you can’t lock on unless the camera is facing an enemy. If you get close enough to someone, Bond will put his gun away and start meleeing while other guys around him are shooting. This can make you die in very tight spots. The melee is pretty basic, with heavy and light punches along with counters. You can hide behind the cover, but this tends to be a problem if the cover is taller than Bond can shoot.
You can use a lot of gadgets, but they tend to be useless unless the level requires them. You get Q spiders, which are remotely operated spiders that can blow things up and go inside little nooks. The coin grenades are pretty straightforward but have crappy physics and bounce around like rubber balls. There’s the nanosuit that makes you invisible, but I never even had to use it since stealth in this game is very hard and almost not an option. The rappel gun is what I used most. Being a Bond game, I wish the gadgets would have come in handy, but they are if you really want to use them. The shooting sections are just so frustrating due to the unbalanced difficulty. I died over 10 times on certain missions, and there are no checkpoints. Some of the longer levels have one, but most levels have none, and this can make you throw your controller across the room.
The graphics are pretty decent for a 2004 PS2 game. The textures are solid, the audio is nice, and there are only slight framerate problems due to the PS2’s limitations. There is an online co-op, but this will never be tested since the servers were shut down. There are a lot of missions in this game, and it will keep you busy for a good 8–10 hours, depending on how many times you die. The game is pretty solid, and you won’t be disappointed. Even people who don’t like Bond can enjoy this game, and that’s the beauty of it.
I watched the movie when it first came out, and now I’m late playing the game. While I played the PC version, I found the Xbox 360 version not much different. The game does sport decent graphics, but now, in 2009, they feel pretty dated, there are a lot of collision detection issues, and the game is very…green. While you spend 70% of the time playing as Jack, you wish you could play as Kong more. There are a decent variety of enemies, such as giant centipedes, bats, T-Rex, raptors, crabs, and so forth. You just wish there were more.
When you play as Jack, you are in a first-person perspective, and there are no health bars, no ammo meters, just you and your instincts. Ubisoft made it this way, so the game feels more cinematic like the movie, and it works. I was surprised at how well you can aim with the spears and guns without a reticle, and it’s very easy to do. Most of the playing as Jack is pretty straightforward, with most of the puzzles revolving around burning brush via lit spears. Most of these puzzles get pretty dull towards the end, but thankfully, as you progress, you play as Kong more often. Playing as Kong, though, is the best part. You are in a 3rd-person POV, and the camera sweeps around dramatically while you beat up a giant T-Rex and fend off dozens of bats.
There are moments when you run along giant cliffsides and swing on huge pillars. While this is good and all, it does get repetitive, and it’s the same thing over and over. The game isn’t very well-paced, and there aren’t any clips from the movie at all. I understand that Michel Ancel wanted players to not emerge out of the experience with jaunting clips from the movie, so everything is done in real-time. Of course, all the load times defeat this purpose since some chapters are only one cutscene long. I also have to mention that King Kong has the easiest access to 1000 GP ever. Just complete the game, and you have all your achievements and GP. Yes, you heard me, just complete certain chapters, and they hand them to you. Of course, this had a lot to do with the fact that most developers didn’t give two sh**s about achievements during the first year or so of the console’s life. While Ubisoft did a good job in the short time they had, it could have been a lot better. The game also ends very abruptly, and it feels like they took huge shortcuts. Despite all this, you’ll get a kick out of the game on any console, and it’ll sure to please the movie fans.
Ahhh…here we are again with the cunning, brave, smart, posh, sexy, and beautiful Lara Croft. Most people overlook the game when they see a half-naked chick on the cover, but Tomb Raider is one of the few (only?) “chick” games that are actually good. Everyone and their mothers have heard of Tomb Raider or Lara Croft as “the game about shooting animals in ruins and sex,” so if you’re reading this, you’re either a fan or one of the latter. While Tomb Raider has absolutely nothing to do with anything sexual, Lara’s skimpy style can contradict that.
The series has always been known for its intricate puzzles, great platforming, and beautiful tombs, ruins, and vistas to explore. Tomb Raider: Legend is the first TR game since the PSX days to be actually good and worth playing. With the first 2 TR games being great, the series started falling with 3, got saved with 4 (The Last Revelation), and just went downhill with 5 (Chronicles) and 6 (Angel of Darkness). TRL revives the series by making us feel familiar and redoing everything we’ve grown to love. The game’s story is also very interesting, mainly for fans of Lara who want to know more about her past. Lara is trying to find the pieces of the Excalibur sword that killed her mother, and she runs into ghosts of her past that come back to haunt her. While the story is teeter-tottering on the edge of bleh, it does get interesting and saves itself at the end with a twist. TR has not been famous for its stories, so let’s get right into the adventure! The game seems to have tried too hard to bring the series back since the game is really short (6 hours you can beat the game) and there are too many levels to explore, so you don’t get a lot of feeling for one level.
Everything about TR’s platforming is still here, so you can either stop reading now or carry on if you are a skeptical action/adventure fan trying to find a new series to get into because you’re bored. The whole game is about puzzles that use the environment and include hanging, swinging, jumping, pole climbing, rope swinging, and zip-lining. Most of the game is pretty easy to figure out where to go since you get a grapple that lets you pull boxes off ledges, bring certain things down to climb across, and even use it to swing across chasms. A lot of items you use with the grapple hook have a shiny gold bit on them, so you know to grapple there; otherwise, you’d spend hours trying to grapple every object in the game. A lot of puzzles are usually lever and switch puzzles, with you pulling statues onto this pressure switch to lower this bridge and pulling this block across onto this switch to raise the gate. Most are simple, but some are unique and fun and have you climbing huge cliffs, walls, and statues to push giant balls (haha!) off ledges to use down below. A lot of the platforming is fun and awesome, with ledges crumbling away, swinging across poles onto ropes, etc.
Not one situation is the same, and that’s what’s so great about the TR series; you’ll have something new to figure out. Jumping around these beautiful environments is easy thanks to the responsive controls, great animations, and a good camera (most of the time). When you jump to a ledge and there’s a wall behind you, the camera will swing out to the side so you can see the whole 30-foot pillar you’re supposed to climb. This works in every type of situation, and the camera does a good job following you. The only time it gets weird is when you’re in tight spaces, when the camera doesn’t know what to do and has seizures. You wind up exploring places such as Japan, Bolivia, Nepal, Kazakhstan, and others. These range from jungles to dark tombs, snow, and even the city. What I found odd was Lara climbing around in buildings like in Japan (she wears a damn sexy dress on that level) and a military base in Kazakhstan, so this can be weird for longtime fans. The whole thing fits well, but it just seems out of place compared to past games.
Combat is also the second thing you’ll be doing the most, and while it’s easy, repetitive, and not amazing, it works and you won’t get annoyed. You just lock onto an enemy and fire away with your pistols, machine guns, or shotguns you find lying around off of enemies. If you get too hurt, you can use health packs lying around as well. While you’ll spend most of your time fighting brain-dead enemies that just stand there and fire at you, you can use the objects in the environment to kill enemies, like barrels, tanks, and even snapping things to make them fall. So while the combat is nothing interesting or fantastic, it’s there, and it works well for what the game can offer. The camera stays behind you well enough when you’re locked on, but Lara will lock onto enemies off-screen a wee bit too often, forcing you to target them yourself.
A new part of TR is the motorcycle driving section. These can be fun and annoying since the physics are a bit weird and the checkpoints are punishing. You just shoot baddies off their bikes while you go off jumps and make your way through. Another added idea is button-pressing cinematics, which are cool to look at and a lot of fun. What makes them so fun is why you have to do them. A lot of the time, it’ll be the most intense part of the game, so you really get into it. The boss fights are also another cool part of the game since they are a bit easy, but they are big and cool, so you’ll have tons of fun with them.
Now that we have two main elements out of the way, let’s talk about cosmetics. Lara’s whole appearance has changed, and she looks so much better. Gone are her sunglasses and the F-size boobs, along with her usual outfit. Lara has different outfits she wears throughout the game, and they are all hot and sexy, and they make Lara look smart and sharp as well. Her breast size has been reduced to DD (boohoo…), and her main outfit is now a brown belly top with shorts, and I prefer this over the old one. She wears an earpiece now, and she no longer has a braided ponytail. Along with Lara looking amazing, she also gets dirty and wet (oh, if only…). When she climbs out of the water, her clothes look wet, and dirt sticks to her as well, so this adds to the realism. She also has a personal light now, so exploring dark places is no longer a problem. The sound is also great with Lara’s charming British accent, and everyone’s voice acting is top-notch.
With new characters aplenty, you’ll expect to like them all, but actually, you won’t. They are underdeveloped and wind up annoying you with their stupid comments over the radio, so the only character you’ll love is Lara. Apart from all of this, the game has replay value with a time trial mode, Croft Manor (where you unlock certain areas to get rewards), and cheats. Doing all of this will grant you new costumes, concept art, profiles, and more. So, as you can see, there is so much to love about TRL, and fans who have hated the series can come back since TR is getting better and better as time goes by. Give the ‘ol girl a second chance and explore her tombs (awww, yeah).
Beyond Good & Evil…yes, I remember that, but for some reason, a certain game called Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was plastered all over TV and stores, and BG&E was disappointingly overshadowed. BG&E is a lovely and wonderful action/adventure game that was released during the peak of the last generation in 2003. BG&E’s premise is something along these lines: You are Jade, who is the caretaker of an orphanage on a futuristic (has a Star Wars feel to it) planet called Hillys. The Alpha Section is fighting a so-called war against the alien invasion known as the Domz. Jade and her pig uncle Pey’j must find out the conspiracy behind the Alpha Section and the Domz in order to bring peace and freedom to the planet of Hillys. You take on a job as a reporter or spy for the IRIS Network, and along the way you take pictures of animals, take part in speedboat races, and play a familiar air hockey game to earn pearls and credits (the game’s two currencies) to find your way through the world.
A lot of the game is set up around two gameplay elements: stealth and combat. While the stealth is stronger than the combat, both are enjoyable and evenly balanced throughout the game. Sneaking around the two major parts of the game to take pictures of the Alpha Section’s activities is rewarding and easy to do. Crouching around corners and learning the guard’s patterns is a typical element of stealth, but the great part about the game is that there’s no jump button. Yes, this makes the gameplay a lot more smooth, and you actually know what to do. If you see a ledge Jade can hop up on, you know to go there instead of hopping around like an idiot trying to, hopefully, find some collision detection glitch and get up onto that ledge. Sneaking around the guards is also like a puzzle in itself since you have to figure out a way to open certain doors, hit certain switches, and even get items without anyone seeing you. The stealth isn’t brutal and is pretty forgiving since if you run out of the area, everything will calm down and go back to normal. Most guards have a weakness on their backs (a yellow jetpack), so this can blind them and make things a little easier. Sneaking around the place is pretty typical, and there’s not much to describe, but it is very fun squeezing between walls, ducking in vents, and whatnot. Thanks to the no-jumper button, dodging lasers is really fun since you have a run button and a dodge button, so you just run and jump over lasers and obstacles, and it can be really fun.
The combat, however, is a bit weak since it’s so simple. You just mash the mouse button, and Jade will beat the S out of everything with her magical staff; hold it down, and you get a supercharged spinning attack. While you can dodge and roll around while running, the camera is one of the major flaws of the game, and the combat can get so tedious and boring. Thankfully, there isn’t much fighting, and you mainly just sneak around and do a lot of traveling. The only thing that keeps the combat from being a snooze fest is the unique way of having to kill certain enemies. Double H or Pey’j may be with you, so you can order them to do their special attack, which will stun enemies or shoot them in the air. When they are in the air, Jade will spin around and knock them across the room, and this is good for taking out certain obstacles in your way.
Traveling around the world can be fun and frustrating since the map is useless and the game is very labyrinthine. Since you’re sneaking around everywhere, you don’t really remember where you’ve been, so if you forget to take a certain picture, you don’t know where it was since the map is just a bunch of white blobs that don’t tell you where to go. Finding things like animals, pearls, and other items is pointless since they are big dots on this useless white map, so hopefully you have enough pearls (used only at Mammago’s Garage to upgrade your speedboat) to finish the game. Finding all of the animals can be almost impossible since a lot of them are in spots you never knew you could even access, so earning a lot of money in the game is a bit hard and can make you go hunting for items you have to know are there. This being the game’s biggest flaw, it can easily be overlooked since you’ll usually get just what you need by just playing normally. You can partake in four separate races, but they are impossible to beat since there is no speed upgrade for your boat, and playing flawlessly and using speed boosts won’t get you first place.
The races are seriously impossible, even if you drive perfectly, so this is just retarded. You can play air hockey at the Akuda Bar or a cup game, which can be fun and challenging. There are items called MDiscs, which you put in save machines to help evolve the story. Increasing your health is done by finding PA1s, Kbup, and Starkos, which are foods that give you health. As you can see, the game tries a lot of original things and is just a fresh world that has been overlooked by many people. With the game’s unique story, great voice acting, and wonderful yet simple gameplay design, you’re sure to spend a great number of hours on this short, yet sweet, adventure.
Picking up the game for any system has its ups and downs. The PC version’s controls are kind of funky for this type of game; the PS2 has a slowdown; the GameCube’s controller requires a controller to play; and the Xbox version isn’t backward compatible on the 360, so take your pick. Either way, you’re going to have a blast with this wonderful yet overlooked game. Look forward to the anticipated game next year as well.
I could never really get into the Metroid series due to its lack of a decent story. While Samus Aran is the gaming pinnacle, there’s not much behind her; besides, she’s an orphan raised by the Chozo race of Tallon IV. A “great poison” came to the planet from a meteor impact, and ever since, the Chozo have had to flee their homeworld. Samus, being armed with Chozo armor and weapons, attempts to save the world from the Space Pirates and jellyfish—I mean, Metroid. The game consists of five huge levels where you go back and forth between finding upgrades to your suit. There are a total of 4 weapons, 4 weapons upgrades, plus a few Morph Ball upgrades, etc.
My favorite part of the game is the cool Morph Ball sections, yet there aren’t enough of them. You can, eventually, use the Spider Track Ball upgrade to click to ceilings and walls, and there are some really cool segments for this, but only a few. You explore each level by needing to use a certain upgrade to get through, such as a door that needs a certain weapon to open. You can also get missile expansion upgrades, powerbomb upgrades, and energy tank (life) upgrades, but most of these are extremely hard to find, and only die-hard Metroid fans will spend the time finding them. On the other hand, there are tons of different enemy types and cool bosses. The game is just about exploring, and now that it’s in 3D, Nintendo really makes you explore. The controls are “dumbified” for Nintendorks who were used to the 2D era and didn’t know how to control an FPS, so there is a lock-on system (that is a bit annoying), and you use the L trigger to move your reticle. This can be really annoying for people used to standard FPS controls. You have to always stop to find out where to jump while enemies are attacking you. First hint: Nintendo, this doesn’t work! Secondly, there are a lot of different types of environments, from water to ice to viney green lands.
Once you find your Gravita suit, you can run through water with no problem, so in turn, you can explore more areas. After you get all of your add-ons, you have to find twelve artifacts to get to Metroid Prime. Basically, if you’ve played other Metroid games, this is exactly like those, except in 3D. I hated the constant backtracking and lousy save system. You will be on one level, but the next add-on is two levels away. Instead of warping there, you have to run through every single level, and the enemy’s respawning doesn’t help either. The best thing I liked about this game was the visuals. They look amazing for a launch title, and what’s amazing are all the effects. Water and steam will hinder your vision, there will be static on-screen when your electronics are disrupted, and Samus’ face will reflect off her visor.
The sound, on the other hand, isn’t so great with Ecco the Dolphin-esque music and creepy techno. While some of it works, it just sounds really old. There is also no multiplayer at all, so this is another disappointment. You can link your Metroid Fusion GBA game for extra stuff, but I couldn’t try that out. The game also sports the lamest endings ever (and I got the second-best one). Overall, if you hated Metroid before, you still will, and if you loved it before, you’ll love it more. Newcomers stay away if they don’t like your FPS formula messed with. I don’t hate Metroid; I just wish it would evolve more.
I’m not really a comic book person, but when a good game comes along, I won’t pass it up. UD is probably the only game ever made that lets you jump 300 feet in the air. Jump over skyscrapers, grab cars and use them as steel fists, battle giant mechs, grab on the copters, and bring them to the ground. UD pulls this off superbly, but not perfectly. The main problem with UD is the extreme difficulty. The difficulty is unbalanced, so you’ll get an easier mission than an impossible one. The enemies just won’t let up at all. You’ll have 10 mechs come after you, shooting missiles and whatnot, and after a few minutes, you’re dead. This will make some people just give up (such as myself).
The game has a pretty decent story, but it’s nothing too special. You are Bruce Banner, who tries to tame the Hulk inside of him by partnering up with a scientist and getting various parts to build the machine to do the latter. Some missions have you protecting things, some have you destroying things, and some have you fetching things. That is pretty much all the missions are about. The combat is really rewarding and awesome. You have to use a basic attack, but combos with these will do massive damage, along with grabs and slams. You can buy new upgrades after you unlock each chapter.
There are 50+ moves, and they are all different. Some vary from being able to grab and throw things while running to jumping on copters and bringing them to the ground. This would be even more fun if there was some sort of block or counter button. You have to take all the damage that is sent at you unless you purchase moves that send missiles flying back and whatnot. You can run up buildings and fly over them to get healthy, but you’ll be doing this more than fighting, and it’s so annoying. While the initial introduction of flying all over the place, jumping as high as a plane, and being able to utterly destroy a whole city is fun, it gets old kind of fast because that’s all you do in this game.
You do have mini-games you can play, but they are pretty lame and boring. You can use a pole to smack enemies as far as you can in one, race, float and land in the middle of a giant ring, rescue people, etc., but they just aren’t as fun as they sound. Hulk fans will be able to unlock artwork and whatnot through pickups in the game, but this still doesn’t save you from fighting the difficulty. The graphics are nothing special. This is a 2003 game, so it looks pretty bad compared to today. If you can stomach the high difficulty, then pick this up. If only this game were easier, I would have been able to finish it.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yep! The fact that I forgot about this game until you made a comment proves that.