BombermanBoard

Bonk · #1 Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:17 pm

If you've been on these boards for a while then you know that it definitely has a Nintendo bias; Perhaps this thread will offer a less one-sided debate and bring about enlightening conversation; hopefully it won't degrade into a childish gamefaqs flame war.

Consider these talking points:

- What's your opinion on the hardware itself?
- What are the highlights and lowlights of the games you've played?
- How was the PS2's launch compared to what others had to offer?
- How do you feel about their business philosophy?
- RIIIIIDGE RACER!

My thoughts:

I have a love/hate relationship with my PS2. First the hardware. The PS2 is the only console since the NES that I've had any technical problems with whatsoever. I frequently had to open it up and clean it out or fix something inside; and the disc tray became warped without my ever pushing on or abusing it; I had to get a new lens and disc tray to fix it. Compare this to my N64 which I've had for 9 years and it still ors perfectly even with regular abuse in the past. This hardware problem really got on my nerves throughout the years, at first limitng me to playing silver Ps2 discs (black PSX discs and Blue PS2 DVDs were too dark for its weak lens) and then it stopped working altogether.

As for the gaming library:

I've had a unique gaming experience on the PS2, since I usually shyed away from popular games until they went GH for $20. My collection, also including games I don't own but borrowed from someone:

Ace Combat 4: ZOMG ACE COMBAT.

Alien Hominid: This game is good, and I don't give a shit what anyone says about it. Common arguements (and my responses) against it (actually not so common, taken from the only other AH player in a thread on shooters from another forum):

- You die too any cheap deaths that can't be dodged.
So its better to have a million slow moving bullets onscreen instead of one big hard to dodge robotic bumblbee thing? What does that make the classic R-Type where you have to dodge a huge meteor 3/4 the size of the screen in a little ship that moves slower than a dead snail crawling into the wind with an iron ball chained to its head.
- The whole art style was made to promote an artist
In that case let's dismiss Shadow of the Colossus for its pretentious art house minimalism and oh, how about every single cel-shaded game ever?
- Alot of enemies take shots at you from behind
That's why you have unlimited ammo. Turn around every once in a while. Or would you like every enemy to spawn directly in front of you?
- The stages are poorly designed
Most vertical shooters have levels varying only in their background, which may or not be interactive.
It's a well-rounded game and for once the developers actually care about the quality of their product.

Ape Escape 2 - I'm not going to bother justifying my opinion here but this game blows.

Ape Escape 3 - This is what AE2 should have been. Ask me about it later.

Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits - haven't played

Bombastic - haven't played

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness - not that great of an action game, but it's a fair action RPG and the soundtrack is bitchin'.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence - The most underrated castlevania. Combines the RPG elements of SotN and the actual playability of the classic Castlevanias. The soundtrack is one of the greatest of all time.

Contra: Shattered Soldier - a game for men with hair on their chest. It's unreasonably hard and I like it that way. Easy mode doesn't make it easy on you: It just gives you more continues to take punishment.

Dark Cloud - What is this. It's like someone decided to take Fatal Labyrinth and remove the Hydlide aspects, or like someone took Ragnarok online or Runescape or some other shitty MMORPG (I loathe online RPGS) and took out the online part. Total crap. My brother loves it.

Dark Cloud 2 - I sold this one off a long time ago. It's a huge improvement over the first (which was total crap) until after the second dungeon when it rapidly spirals into mediocrity. And once again you get the most generic RPG experience since Beyond the Beyond. Not worthy.

Devil May Cry - Good way to kill a weekend. Dante's badassness is questionable but not the quality of this game. The lowlight is the normal battle music which falls under the dictionary definition of repetitive butt metal. Not action gaming's savior but a worthy addition to any collection.

Final Fantasy X - I was suprised it wasn't as bad as the first 400 hours would have you believe; yeah, the storyline is pretty much FF7 cut-paste; yeah, the soundtrack totally blows; yeah the character design is laughably uninspired and repetitive, but it's a solid RPG for you to go 3/4 of the way through until you get to that goddamn snow mountain and quit for a few months after getting tired of losing to Seymour over and over and being to apathetic to level your characters up.

Final Fantasy X-2 - Someone from another forum I go to shopped the image to say Final Fantasy X-Jew, I lol'd and cracked open a can of lmaonade. I like the battle system but I only played the game for a few hours before I lost interest and haven't picked it up since.

Gadget Racers - haven't played really

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City - I think there will be enough GTA hate in this thread without my input.

Guitar Hero - prepare for some copypasta from one of my journals:
"When I was 12, I was playing my piece of shit 150 dollar fender and I thought about how BITCHIN' it would be if there was a game where you were a knight who demolished buildings by shooting flaming dragons from his axe. And I thought this game should be called guitar hero. Fast forward a few years later, I opened the pages of OPM (a really shitty gaming rag, so I wipe my ass with it) and read about a new game called Guitar Hero, I was infuriated, just like when I first saw Samurai Pizza Cats for the first time, plagiarizing bastards. I threw the magazine at the wall and broke the demo CD inside and my mom bitched at me for it, true story.

So today I actually played it. This was because a friend convinced me to, saying it was not only better than Frequency (which I've never played), but also better than DDR Mario Mix (EDIT THERE IS SARCASM BETWEEN THESE HERE PARENTHESES As if any game could hope to be). Needless to say I am not impressed. On a real guitar, there are 24 frest over 6 strings, including open string. 6 * 24 = 144 frets. The guitar hero controller has 5 buttons. Awesome. I would rather justy play on the ordinary PS2 controller instead, instead of disgracing the name of god's greatest instrument. There isn't anyway to use real-life knowledge to play this game either, so Steve Vai would have just as hard a time playing it as Jow BLow down the street. If I made a music game, it would be called PAC-Man. You play as a pen that must write perfect authentic cadences on a staff.

And you'd think that a game about guitars would feature a soundtrack not catered toward pussies. The hardest stuff on here is Megadeth, AKA metal for 14-year olds. I would have demanded Frank Zappa but it would be an insult to his great name to include his work on guitar hero's soundtrack alongside such classic artists like Sum 41."

Half-Life - haven't played it but who cares there's a vastly superior PC version anyway

Katamari Damacy - weeaboo: the game.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System - Ratchet & Clank: Not very fun with an incredibly bad soundtrack version

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - don't get me started on this piece (not masterpiece). Hideo Kojima is the most overrated writer in video games.

Metal gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - This is how you make a fun MGS game. The gameplay is amazingly well polished woth tons of things to do and tons of ways to do them. Buy it. Oh yeah storyline still sucks but not nearly to the extent of MGS2.

Pac-Man World 2 - Imagine a plain white box with the word "PLATFORMER" on it. Pac-Man World 2 is the game inside that box.

Phantom Brave - To be honest I haven't played far enough into it to be able to comment but that won't stop me: this game is boring, and it doesn't help that all the characters look like sprite rips of Ragnarok online. Bitchin' soundtrack.

Primal - I didn't care for this game and its lousy butt metal soundtrack too much but I really didn't give it a chance, it's an average action game.

Psychonauts - Tim Schafer. Enough said.

R-Type Final - A fitting tribute to one of the greatest series of all time. What irem does besides R-Type is beyond me. I guess this gives them more time to work on Kickle Cubicle 2.

Ratchet and Clank - All, 4 games, I bought all of them (on release day, except for #1 which I bought a few days later). Ratchet & Clank, the light of my life, why must you only come out once a year? To get an idea of how much I like this series, take everything good you've ever said about a game and magnify that by 100x, then add on the fact that David Bergeaud composed their soundtracks for the best series ever.

Samurai Warriors - haven't played it yet

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga - MORE COPYPASTA! - "take all the angst and anime cliches you can find, paint them on a generic RPG, give it a bitchin' soundtrack and throw in some horrible buddhist references for good measure. Then break it into 2 half assed chunks with virtually no improvement and expect people to pay twice as much for it. What can I say, it worked for me."

Shining Force Neo - more like gauntlet than Shining Force. Haven't played far enough to comment. Although I will say this: HOT STUFF COMIN' YOUR WAY!

Shinobi - A great and underrated Ninja action game. Not as good as DMC but what can you expect?

Silent Hill 2 - Haven't played very far into it, but Pyramid Head is in it and anyone with sense knows that Pyramid Head is awesome.

Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus - Its OK, I like the cane and swinging on things but it's nothing to buy the system over.

TimeSplitters - Generic FPS with CAPTAIN ASH!

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect -haven't played, but I watched my little brother play periodically and I like its personality, Captain Ash is back and more Charles *beep*ens than ever.

Xenosaga Episode I - an above average RPG marred by a lousy Chrono Cross-cloned angstacular soundtrack and an insultingly self-important and pretentious storyline; this game features attractive female androids.

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Alright, that's my thoughts, what're your's BMB? PS2 THREAD GO!