PlayStation (PS1)

Dark Seed II – 29 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/20/2024
Posted in: Mac, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sega, Sega Saturn, Sony. Leave a comment

Publisher: Cyberdreams

Developer: Cyberdreams

Release Date: 11/30/1995


Available On

The marketing, box art, and even screenshots are quite misleading for the type of game this is. Even the fantastic artwork doesn’t accurately convey the tone of the game. The first game was a chaotic combination of trial and error, resulting in its incredibly short duration. The second game follows more linear and traditional point-and-click adventure gameplay with digitized scenes and full voice acting. While the voice acting isn’t half bad, the sprites could have used a few more animations and don’t mash well with the H.R. Giger art style of the Darkworld. 

Dark Seed II focuses mostly on a murder mystery. You play as Mike Dawson, who is recovering from the events of the first game. The local sheriff has charged you as the prime suspect after the murder of your high school sweetheart, Rita. You then wander around various locations in town, talking to people trying to move the story along, and this is where the game really falls apart. Like most point-and-click adventures of the time, the game is very obtuse; there aren’t any puzzles, but knowing what items to pick up and where is a real chore. The first game had issues with objects blending into the background, but in this game, you just wouldn’t know where to start. I had to play this game with a full guide, or I would have spent hours wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. The lack of a button or other mechanism to access the map makes the significant amount of backtracking even worse. To get to the map, you must walk back to the edge of the area, slow walking speed and all.

Once you get to the Darkworld, things get a little more interesting. The artwork is fantastic, and it’s a shame the low-resolution visuals don’t do it justice. The voice acting didn’t mesh well with the characters in this world, which put me off. They are meant to represent people in the real world, but come on. Why is there a strange statue of a gargoyle that Giger created speaking with a silly New York accent? It just doesn’t sit right tonally. I still loved the bizarre architecture and surreal atmosphere that the Darkworld gave, but the repetitive music, sound effects, and half-assed animations just don’t do any of this justice.

There isn’t much gameplay. You can change your action icon with the right mouse button and have a pop-up inventory, but you won’t be using it much. Most of the game involves walking back and forth and talking to people. While the overarching murder mystery is rather interesting and the ending was a surprise, I wanted more of the in-between stuff. There was a significant opportunity to bring the Darkworld to life, and even in the mid-90s, this could have been feasible. There was a hint of this happening when you converse with certain creatures; they mention the Darkworld briefly, but the worldbuilding simply lacks depth. The adventure titles of that era, like The 11th Hour, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Full Throttle, and others, didn’t follow the same pattern. Many other games did this just fine, without the macabre legacy of Giger himself lending a hand to the art department. 

Without the artwork, this would be a ho-hum adventure title. While there have been many improvements over the original title, I would still like to see more Darkworld architecture. I wanted more time spent here. Yes, there is more of the dark world. There are more screens, buildings, and creatures in the Darkworld than in other adventure titles of the time. There is a layer of cheese that you just can’t look past when it comes to certain events or scenes in the game, and it made me roll my eyes or frown. H.R. Giger’s art is my favorite of all time. There’s so much that could be explored here, but instead we get an obtuse, backtrack-heavy game with an interesting murder mystery and the best parts taking the backseat.

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Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare – 22 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/01/2023
Posted in: Game Boy Color, Nintendo, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sega, Sega Dreamcast, Sony, Steam Deck Playable, Steam Deck Verification. Leave a comment

Publisher: Infogrames

Developer: Darkworks

Release Date: 06/18/2001


Available On

A murder mystery. A supernatural thrill ride. A past that haunts you. These are many things, Edward Carnby and Aline Cedrac have to deal with. Carnby’s best friend, Charles Fiske, is found dead off the coast of an island. You are sent to investigate, but your parachute is damaged on impact, and you must fight off strange creatures from another dimension while trying to find out the fate of your friend. The story here is surprisingly deep and involved, but not very interesting. It’s akin to a sleepy mystery novel that keeps you hooked just enough to keep reading but then quickly forget about it shortly afterwards. The New Nightmare is kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place due to the timing of its release. It came out just before the beginning of a new generation of consoles and kind of feels like it has a foot in each generation.

I do have to state that the visuals are very impressive right off the bat. For a Dreamcast game, the pre-rendered backgrounds would be mistaken for a PS2 title, especially when using VGA. They are bright, crisp, and well detailed without that 32-bit sheen that older “tank-style” horror titles had that used pre-rendered backgrounds. The lighting effects are well done, especially when using your flashlight, and the monster designs are surprisingly not very scary or interesting. They feel like generic sci-fi creatures from a B-grade midnight premiere on the Sci-Fi (yes, not SyFy; get that out of here) Channel. The atmosphere is really tense, and there are a few jump scares scattered throughout the game, but overall it does a great job of giving you a haunting, impending doom feeling.

Back to the whole one foot in each generation business it still has pre-rendered backgrounds, tank controls, and a tiresome inventory system. Thankfully, there aren’t a lot of items to pick up, as there are few puzzles in this game. Most of your pick-ups are weapons, ammo, saves, and first aid. You can combine and split objects, but I only had to do this once as Edward. I got tired of having to do a quick reload by going into my inventory screen and manually reloading there, as there is no reload button. You must wait until you are out of ammo first. This would be nice to have, as you eventually learn how many shots each creature type takes and can count them that way. I also hated how much the views and angles flipped around. I appreciate the more modern take on cinematic angles and camera views, but this game could have easily been 100% done in real-time on the Dreamcast with no issues. When fighting some creatures, you get knocked into another angle, and the screen pauses to load for a split second, making you disoriented. This especially proves troublesome during the final boss fight.

I did like how the game doesn’t skimp on ammo, but you must preserve it in the beginning and be smart. I easily missed the shotgun the first time around and had to restart, as you don’t get much revolver ammo in the game at all. The majority are shells. I wound up in a hallway with zombies, zero ammo, and 200 shells. Thankfully, it was only 30 minutes of gameplay before I could get to the shotgun again, but this is another foot in the previous generation. I like the better map with an actual dot on screen showing you where you are, but certain angles and lighting make things hard to see. Some items sparkle, but I would see sparkles through walls that were objects in another room. It doesn’t help at all.

If you conserve well during the first disc, you get many more weapons later on and tons of ammo, and you can just blast away. However, the game tries to guide you a bit better, similar to how modern games do. Puzzles will sometimes be two-way communication over the radio with hints or instructions you need to follow or clearly needing symbols for a code lock, but you can use an item to follow clues and trails to the symbols you need. It’s a great step in a new direction, as I love these games’ atmosphere, story, creature design, or anything else but navigating their frustrating, labyrinthine, and obtuse maps. Backtracking is also not super horrible here. There were only a few times I needed to go from one end of a level to another, and it was the final time before moving on to the next major area. I do detest the limited saving system. You need to find Charms of Saving, and there are only around 20 in the whole game. Thankfully, the game is done in less than 5 hours, and if you are careful, you won’t die and can spread them out. I only used about 10 during my whole playthrough.

Overall, The New Nightmare isn’t a reboot of the game (we were graced with that horrible beauty just a few years later), but a step into making the traditional point-and-click adventures console-friendly and trying to make them more modern. The story and characters are interesting enough to push you through the game, but mostly they are forgettable. The voice acting is surprisingly decent, and the visuals are awesome. There is so much pushing and pulling in two different generations that the game falls into typical 32-bit supernatural horror trappings but also tries to break free of some. There are plenty of weapons and ammo; the auto-aim system works well; the puzzles are not obnoxiously obtuse; and backtracking is minimal. Overall, The New Nightmare has aged better than many games of its era thanks to trying to push in more modern directions. This is a great way to spend a Halloween or dreary evening.

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Mortal Kombat 3 – 28 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/18/2023
Posted in: Game Boy, Game Gear, Nintendo, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sega, Sega Genesis, Sega Master System, Sega Saturn, Sony, Super Nintendo. Leave a comment

Publisher: Williams Entertainment

Developer: Software Creations

Release Date: 11/1995


Available On

I remember MK3 very fondly as a kid. I remember seeing ads for it everywhere. Specifically, a cardboard standee in a Walmart with the giant logo My parents had a friend bring the Saturn version over once during a really bad storm. I remember seeing the arcades as well. I wound up renting it for the Super Nintendo and had a blast. I mostly loved the much darker and more mature tone the series took. MKII felt more cartoony and stylish, while MK3 felt like it pushed the first game’s realism even further.

Sadly, it does not transfer over to the Game Boy version. I don’t know why they bothered at this point. Probe dropped the ball after the pretty decent MKII and made MK3 just about as bad as the port of the first game. Back are the smaller sprites, sluggish animations, unresponsive controls, and weird speed issues with jumping animations. Animations seem to speed up and slow down, making the game just slightly better than a Tiger Electronics version. The control scheme is mostly intact, which isn’t that bad, but we also get the running mode, which is useless on such a tiny screen with a low frame rate. A new developer took the helm here and went with a 512K cart this time, which could still be bigger. Sure, we get four stages, but they’re ugly, and the music stinks too.

Once again, we get quite a few cut characters. Liu-Kang, Stryker, Nightwolf, Kung-Lao, Jax, and Shang Tsung are all missing. That’s nearly half the roster. Every character has their babality intact, but only a single fatality and mercies were kept in. It honestly doesn’t matter how insanely slow the game plays. It feels like everyone is wading through mud. It’s just so unacceptable at this point, as many Game Boy games look and play so much better.

There is nearly no redeeming value in playing this atrocity. It’s the worst version of the game, and at this point, 8-bit versions should have already stopped. We’re almost into 1996. 32-bit systems have been here for a couple of years now. The Game Boy is already almost 7 years old. I can only say this is for people who are curious about or are collectors of Mortal Kombat games. Otherwise, stay away.

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Syphon Filter 3 – 19 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/22/2020
Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Sony Bend

Release Date: 11/06/2001


Available Exclusively On

Gabe and Lian are now federally wanted fugitives and are marked as terrorists after trying to foil the agencies’ plans to acquire the Syphon Filter biological weapon. The game picks up right after the end of Syphon Filter 2. Both agents are testifying to Vince Hadden, the main villain of the previous game, and the entire game is made up of flashback missions filling in gaps for the entire series.

While this is a fine idea, Syphon Filter 3 suffers from a huge flaw, and that’s level design. The clever level design from the last 2 games is out the window here and seriously brings this entire game down. While I liked knowing what happened before the first game during the beginning cut scene with Rhomer and Mara in the jungle and seeing how Gabe, Lian, Mujari, and Teresa all met, the levels don’t do it justice. The issue here is both lazy-level design and over-ambitious design mixed with hardware limitations. This game came out too late and should have been made for the PS2. Levels in this game are large and open and suffer from the black distance and low draw distance from the PS1’s hardware limitations. The level design is incredibly confusing and hard to navigate. One mission as Lian in the Ancient Ruins is just a labyrinth of hallways, and instead of a smooth push through each level, there’s tons of backtracking and running around blindly.

Another issue the game suffers from is too much action. There aren’t really any required stealth missions anymore, and too many enemies are thrown at you at once, as well as a mix of low-ammo resources. I frequently ran out of ammo and had to exploit the game by resorting to headshots when I didn’t have to. The increased enemy count just doesn’t work with the game’s auto-lock-on system. Many times I died because I couldn’t switch between enemies fast enough. Another mission as Gabe has him running around a boat to plant explosives, which is incredibly boring, and one level is so short it only has four enemies in it. I feel like 18 months wasn’t enough time to develop this game and create the fun, clever levels and enemy placements that made the series so popular.

There are no new gameplay elements added this time around, just new weapons. The MARS, Spyder, and AUG3000 (that can see through walls)—and that’s about it. Even these weapons are hard to come by, and you’re left with the same weapons used in the previous two games. I also didn’t care for the multiplayer this time around, and the added mini-games, which are just trial runs, aren’t that fun either. The only really enjoyable part of the game was the final mission, as it felt like a classic Syphon Filter level and the satisfying conclusion to the story for this chapter.

There are no visual improvements outside of better-pre-rendered cut-scenes, and virtually no new gameplay additions or enhancements. Overall, I feel Syphon Filter 3 was a product of rushed development and trying to get it out the door for the PS1 players who hadn’t adopted the PS2 just yet. Is it worth playing? Yes, if you’re a hardcore fan, but just take the game with a grain of salt and be prepared for aimless wandering around levels and many frustrated restarts due to poor enemy placement and a lack of ammo.

Syphon Filter 2 – 20 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/15/2020
Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Eidetic

Release Date: 03/14/2000


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Syphon Filter is one of my favorite gaming franchises of all time and one of the top five PS1 series. It was the very first serious “adult” game I ever played and got into. Just the concept of how shooters work was totally alien to me before Syphon Filter. It was a game that I also spent a lot of time with my late father, and we aced each game, learning every enemy spawn point, hidden cache, and level design. We rented this game frequently and spent dozens of hours mastering each game. We probably spent more time on Syphon Filter 2 than any other game in the series, and for good measure, it’s the best game out of the three.

Syphon Filter 2 isn’t just an expansion, despite playing and looking exactly like the first game, as there is a greater and more expanded story, more weapons, new levels, and it’s also a couple of hours longer than the first game coming on two discs. You play as both Gabriel Logan and Lian Xing, as you are fugitives of the US government and are still fighting the agency, so get back the data discs that store the Syphon Filter data. The game picks up right where the last one left off when Gabe crashes into the Colorado Rockies. In the first level, the game introduces new weapons and gameplay elements, such as being able to leap gaps. New weapons include the unsilenced 9mm, H-11 sub-machine gun, silenced HK-5, UA12 auto-shotgun, hand taser, flashlight, teargas launcher, and more. These weapons are just as memorable and awesome as the first games. There are so many new weapons here that it nearly doubles the arsenal.

On top of this, there are other gameplay elements added, such as enemies being able to get a headshot on you. The HUD will flash red, and a headshot text will appear on the screen. You have mere seconds to get out of the way, or you will instantly die. New enemies are introduced, such as full-armored ones that only die with explosions in one level towards the end of the game. There is also a better balance of action and stealth with Lian’s levels in the air force base, which are perfect examples. Agents can be killed, but military MPs cannot. You must sneak around and tase the MPs with your hand taser, but the agents are fair game with silenced weapons. Another level has you sneaking around vents, and night vision automatically kicks in when the area is too dark, which is awesome.

The level design is on point, just like in the first game. Each level is memorable and fun and takes you around the globe. From the Colorado Rockies, the first disc mostly takes place in Moscow nightclubs, Agency bio-labs, and New York sewers. The levels are incredibly well designed, with the perfect balance of stealth and action. The train ride is a fun linear shooting gallery, while the bridge level requires quick thinking, stealth, and mastering enemy movement patterns. You can tell Eidetic has mastered this genre with the second game, and even the voice acting has greatly improved. This is an AAA PS1 game at its finest, and you will be hard-pressed to find anything better on the system.

The visuals didn’t really improve any, but they already pushed the system to its limits and still have plenty of detail, and the game looks great. There is some issue with slowdown here and there, but what PS1 game didn’t have that? There’s also a shoehorned multiplayer mode that I didn’t even care for. 1v1 on maps from both Syphon Filter games just isn’t very fun. If the game allowed 2v2 via a multi-tap, that would have been awesome, but what we have here is something just not very fun, and not to mention half the maps need to be unlocked by finding secrets in the game.

Overall, Syphon Filter 2 shows what the PS1 era of games would do and helps push the third-person shooter genre into what it is today. While it came out very late at the end of the system’s life cycle, a mere week before the launch of the PS2, it still sold incredibly well and showed that the PS1 had staying power even after its successor launched. The story, voice acting, visuals, and overall feeling of the game are fantastic, and there’s nothing else like it on the system. It’s a must-own for any PlayStation fan.

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis – 19 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/07/2019
Posted in: Gamecube, Nintendo, PC Reviews, PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sega, Sega Dreamcast, Sony. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Release Date: 11/17/2000


Available On

Resident Evil has been more about tense action, inventory management, and puzzles than horror. RE3 polishes up the already not-so-smooth gameplay of Resident Evil and ports it over to the Dreamcast to make another buck off of it. RE3 doesn’t really have much of a story, but the tense action, puzzle-solving, and always-looming Nemesis boss make this one of the tensest games of the era.

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You play as Jill Valentine (the star of the first game) and are back in Racoon City this time to try and find out what happened during the outbreak. Being a direct sequel to the second game, you visit a few familiar areas, and some Easter eggs are tossed in. Outside of running around collecting ammo, healing items, documents, and various things of that nature, you solve puzzles and mow down armies of the undead and genetically modified. New enemies crop up that are freaky and challenging, and the only boss in the game is Nemesis, who is a tough monster, and choices are thrown into the game depending on where the story goes. These choices impact where you start in locations and how you approach fighting the Nemesis. One choice kept the Nemesis from chasing me around town, but I was going to have to fight him early on. You can totally avoid fighting him in most cases, but he becomes stronger the less you fight him.

I honestly recommend playing this game in easy mode the first time, as you get tons of healing items and weapons at the start, as well as infinite save ribbons. This mode should be used first for another reason, and that’s to learn the layout of the game. Resident Evil is a game where enemy location, map layout, and puzzle-solving are a must before attempting harder modes. Now with all that said, I do find earlier Resident Evil games tough outside of just combat, as without a guide you can get lost and frustrated quickly as puzzles are obtuse, and there might be objects you saw hours ago that you have to go back and get, such as the Downtown/Uptown maps in this game. It’s imperative to write things down if you don’t have a guide, as you will run around for hours trying to find that one item that you can’t remember.

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The story and characters are nothing special, but the voice acting is surprisingly decent for its time. We don’t learn much about Umbrella outside of someone going in and trying to pop off the supervisors throughout the city and cover up the T-virus outbreak. There’s no character development or anything like that, so you’re mostly paying for the action. The visuals are rather nice, but at this point, the pre-rendered backgrounds were getting tiring. The Dreamcast version is a slightly smoother PlayStation version, but there’s not much of a difference. I would have liked to have seen more modes, better visuals, and new content for a new $50 release, but what we get is mainly for newcomers.

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I highly recommend RE3 on the Dreamcast. At this point, this is the definitive version of the game and the best the series has to offer up until this point. Don’t expect a deep story; have a guide ready, and you’ll be in for a good 8–10 hours of intense action and fun.

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Akuji The Heartless – 19 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/18/2017
Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Eidos

Developer: Crystal Dynamics

Release Date: 12/31/1998


Available Exclusively On

  • ps1

Crystal Dynamics was a juggernaut on the PS1. After Tomb Raider was released, they firmly placed their name in every gamer’s household. Akuji was released closer to the end of the system’s life cycle, and while critically acclaimed, it didn’t sell well. It was a bizarre game about voodoo and was hard to market at the time.

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You play as Akuji, who needs to get his wife’s soul back and must travel through the different levels of hell to reclaim his ancestors’ souls and appease the keeper of the vestibules, which act as hubs. In each hub, there are doors you can go through that lead to each level. If you don’t collect these floating heads, you won’t be able to advance in the game, and I absolutely hate this system. Even with all the skills, you used to beat bosses and enemies; you needed to collect things. I feel this is demeaning and frustrating. For the story, it’s forgettable and nothing special.

The game plays quite well, with Akuji jumping around, slashing, and blasting spells. You will use your spells more than you think in this game, and there are a variety of them, and each is used for different situations. Outside of combat, there is some minor puzzle solving and switch throwing. Platforming in the game is mostly fine, but the camera is sluggish to move around with the shoulder buttons, so Akuji will jump off an edge or fall to his death. Another irritating thing is the use of lives. I mean, why? You can hit checkpoints, which are poorly spaced, so why not just restart there? Why punish the player even more, as if surviving and checkpoints aren’t enough?

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I felt this game dragged on a bit too long. There are over 15 levels, and while they all look different and great, they’re unoriginal. They are mostly short, and each level plays out the same. Grab this doohickey, put it here, flip this switch, kill this enemy to lower this wall, etc.

While this was the norm back in the day, it just doesn’t hold up well. Maybe if some things changed a bit, like the use of lives, it would be a more fun experience. Mixing a collectathon with a progressive platformer just doesn’t work well here.

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The game looks fantastic, as Crystal pushed the PS1 to its limits, probably too hard. When effects like water splashes or magic effects flash around, the game slows down to a crawl, which can get quite annoying, but it’s still playable.

Overall, Akuji is a great PS1 title that has solid controls and great gameplay; it just has so many frustrating factors around it that make it less enjoyable as you play. If you really need a PS1 platformer that’s different, then go for it, as this is a hidden gem.

Sled Storm – 18 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/08/2017
Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), PlayStation 2, Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: EA Canada

Release Date: 7/31/1999


Available On

The late ’90s were home to extreme sports on consoles. There was a huge boom in this genre, and it led to many great games. Sled Storm is kind of an oddball, as snowmobile racing isn’t a huge hit in the US. However, EA managed to pull off a responsive and fun little racing title.

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Sled Storm is similar to most arcade racing games from its time. There are several modes such as championship, single race, and multiplayer. Championship has two different modes. One mode is an open circuit with natural courses and you can upgrade your ride. The second one is a snocross closed-circuit event in which you just need to win. Sounds simple enough right?

Wrong. You need to get first place in every race to advance. There are four other racers on the track, and the game is subject to frustrating rubber band AI. You can be ahead all through the race, and on the final lap, everyone seems to zoom ahead of you. One crash, and it’s restart time. The other annoying thing is that you only get three restarts and then have to restart the entire championship.

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It’s rather annoying but tolerable. The crafts handle really well and the visuals are great. Powder flies up behind the vehicle into the camera every time you bounce or take a turn. There’s snow blowing toward you and the track is nicely detailed. The controls are what steal the show here. They feel smooth and very responsive and make you want to keep playing.

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There is no fancy trick system here, but a point system is used for knocking down objects on the track and other reasons I couldn’t figure out. That’s about all there is to this game. The tracks actually vary, but after beating the championship there’s really no reason to come back. Think of this as a quick little 2-3 hour racing game and back on the shelf it goes.

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Fear Effect – 17 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/06/2017
Posted in: PlayStation (PS1), Retro Consoles, Sony. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment
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Publisher: Kronos Digital Entertainment

Developer: Eidos Interactive

Release Date: 2/24/2000


Available Exclusively On

  • ps1

Fear Effect is actually a game that goes way back for me. I remember the summer of 2000 and was shopping around in a local game store, Game Doctor, back in Casper, Wyoming. There weren’t really any databases to look up reviews in back then, outside of magazines, so I would always pick a game based on its cover. I saw Fear Effect, $30, used in the display case. I used trade-in credit (back when it was all written down on carbon paper) and took the game home. Seeing it had four discs, I thought I was in for one hell of a ride.

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I was actually dead wrong and returned the game the following day. It was frustrating, hard, and too mature for my age at the time. It’s so strange finishing this game almost 20 years later and realizing that it was actually harder than I thought. This game is downright unfair and frustrating around every corner.

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You play three different characters throughout the game: Hana, Deke, and Glas. All three are mercenaries hired by a Chinese mobster who wants his kidnapped daughter back. It starts out as a spy-style action game and then quickly turns into something supernatural. It’s the strangest thing and is such a jarring change of pace for this type of game. That will be the least of your worries, however.

The game has beautifully pre-rendered backgrounds that you run around in Resident Evil style. These “tank” controls are just awful, and there’s a reason why they don’t exist anymore. You can sneak around, shoot, and use items, but it’s how those are executed that makes the game so hard and unfair. Stealth is actually out of the question; no matter how slowly I snuck up, guards would hear me and kill me. I just had to blast my way through everything, and therein lies another issue: ammo. You will have many enemies thrown at you with little ammo, and the supernatural enemies don’t drop ammo. They even get clever towards the end and make them drop paper ammo that you need to backtrack to a fire and burn to get the real ammo.

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It doesn’t end there; you will be reloading save after save and dying over and over again. Most of the puzzles and traps will trigger an FMV, and usually a death FMV, meaning game over. Just the slightest pixel of your character touches the trap, and you’re dead. It’s back to reloading the save, which is rather long, by the way. The backtracking is the final killer here, especially on the final level, with items gathering on either end of the level just to unlock the door on the opposite end. It’s silly, archaic, even for the time, and didn’t need to be in this game.

I will admit that the puzzles are rather clever. You actually get clues that are organically placed in the environment, and you need to write them down to solve the puzzle, which is neat. Back in the day, walkthroughs were scarce, so all you had was a guide or writing things down. The puzzles aren’t serious brain-scratchers, but they are tough and fun.

The combat itself is awful and is the main cause for reloads. You get a dodge button, but with awful tank controls, you just stand there blasting everything. There’s no cover, no armor, nothing like that. You also have to flip through your inventory with squares and circles while you’re getting blown away, which can cause problems. Why not pause the action with a radial menu? That’s not too hard.

Is the game even worth trudging through for the story? Not really. The mix between Chinese mafia antics and the undead is weird and forgettable here. The characters have no depth, and the story is slow to move forward. It’s entertaining enough to push you through the game, but nothing you would replay, even for the multiple endings. With that said, I only recommend playing this if you want a beautiful-looking PS1 game to play or a decent adventure. Just get the cheat codes handy, or expect to spend more time reloading than playing.

Sony PSOne (w/Screen) – 15 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 09/04/2017
Posted in: Hardware, PlayStation (PS1), Sony Consoles. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Manufacturer: Sony
Release Date: 7/7/2000
MSRP: $99.99 (PSOne) $129.99 (LCD Unit) $199.99 (Combo Pack)

It took many years to acquire, but the PSOne with a screen attachment has been one of my top must-have consoles since it came out. Growing up as a kid, my parents didn’t have the $100 for the console and the $130 for the screen add-on. The Combo Pack was released for $200 and seemed insane, but the PS2 was out and cost $300 at the time of release. $130 for a 5″ TFT LCD screen might seem like a lot, but this did more than just display games. It had an amazing brightness range and clear stereo speakers that could be quite loud when turned up all the way. It also easily screwed onto the back of the unit and had a headphone jack, AV in, and even AV out, so you could just plug it up to your TV without taking the screen off. The power cable also plugs directly into the screen, so there was a lot of foresight on Sony’s part.

What makes the screen so awesome compared to any other console out there is that you can take it with you. Using a 7.5-volt car adapter and bringing it into your bedroom or on the go allows you to make playing the PS1 a more immersive and personal experience. The LCD screen makes the games look better than they do on current or older TVs. It’s like Sony found a perfect balance and knew how the PS1 would render and output, so they made the perfect screen for it. All the games display clearly and sharply, and the screen is quite vivid, so I can easily see the $130 price point during release.

As for the system itself, what can I say? It’s the PlayStation 1! While the system’s first iterations had many flaws, such as overheating, cheap laser assemblies, and various other issues, the PSOne is sleek, slim, and just the basic unit, which is all we need. Sony went for a rounded style with this system, and it looks great. The only downside is that you can’t use most wireless controllers because the receivers are too large and can’t fit a memory card on top. The system is lightweight, even with the screen attached, and would easily fit into a backpack. The PS1 has an amazing library—probably some of the best out there. The PS1 wiped the floor with the Nintendo 64 due to a more diverse and massive library. The Nintendo 64 has some memorable games, but the overall experience just couldn’t top the PS1. With pre-rendered and live-action cutscenes, thanks to the CD format, it was a whole new experience. From the classic start-up jingle to the amazing feeling of the DualShock controller, and even down to the black underside of the discs, the PS1 was a behemoth and was unstoppable.

Would I recommend the current going price for a full PSOne combo pack at $100? Yes, go out and get it now. If you’re a PlayStation fan or just want to check out the classic library, this is the perfect unit to pick up. For some advice, make sure when you buy the unit that the power and tray buttons work. These are large buttons and can easily be stuck or get grimed down inside. Also, make sure the hinges on the screen aren’t loose. Many units have cracked hinges with screens that won’t stay up, and most importantly, make sure the LCD backlight isn’t dead. I bought a unit from a local store only to have the backlight die on me the second I turned it on when I got home. Of course, make sure both speakers are working and that there isn’t any rattling or distortion. Make sure to ask the sellers these questions, or look for this if you find one in person.