[weasel]

Winback: Covert Operations

Developer/Publisher: Koei
Platform: Nintendo 64/PS2 (PS2 version reviewed)
ESRB: T
WSRS: I pretty much agree with the above ESRB rating. There's quite a bit of gunplay in the game, but all the blood is replaced with colorful flashes of light, much in the style of Oni (or Turok with blood off). Game experience may change if you're a compulsive swearer during multiplayer matches.

A satellite research lab has been captured by terrorists, and SCAT is sent in to take it back. The newest member, Jean-Luc Cougar, is just expressing how nervous he is when their chopper starts taking hits. Everybody dives out, but at that point they're all seperated. It's up to Jean-Luc to find everybody else and do what he can to accomplish the mission.

I've seen Winback compared very much with the Metal Gear Solid series. While the plot seems very similar - terrorists take over a weapons facility - that's about where the similarities end.

This game's emphasis is on real-ish military tactics. You're typically safe if you're behind cover, and you can choose to break cover at any time to start shooting at enemies. Taking cover is as simple as facing a wall and pressing a button, and the R1 button (which usually aims your weapon) will also double as the "break cover" button - making Jean-Luc jump out of cover to shoot at enemies. Releasing the button puts him back in cover.

You get a small assortment of weapons with which to sort through the terrorist population. You always have your .45 handgun, which has a good clip size, moderate power, and unlimited ammo. You also start the game with an MP5 sub-machine gun, which while it's a little weaker than the pistol, is rapid fire and has a larger clip. Your starting equipment lastly comes with a pump-action shotgun, which can take down small groups of enemies in one shot. You can find a silenced handgun (which doesn't do a whole lot of good) and a rocket launcher (be careful not to waste this).

The game's controls are relatively decent compared to those in similar games - while it predates games with similar styles like 007: Everything or Nothing, it manages to outdo this example several times over. It's painless to get Jean-Luc into and out of cover (unless you're crouching - since the same button is used to roll that is used to get into cover), and it's also much easier to aim manually if the need arises. You can't move while shooting, but this only serves to emphasize the importance of cover - and the enemy AI, while typically puts up a fighting chance, doesn't seem to be smart/annoying enough to walk just around the corner so you can't aim at them while you're leaning against a wall (at least, not about 95% of the time). On occasion, the game will give you a check point, but sometimes these are pretty far apart, so if you get killed, you'll be sent back quite a ways. And unlike MGS, the game is seperated into stages, after which you are allowed to save the game to memory card.

Graphically, this game looks okay. Models have a good number of polygons on them, and they do look much like the objects they're supposed to represent. Animations are done quite well, and some of the little effects are also pretty cool (though the usage of the old-school "blink out" method of removing corpses is questionable). It doesn't stand up to newer PS2 games, naturally, because if I remember correctly this game was released shortly after the system's launch (it's old enough that it doesn't even come on a DVD-ROM - it still uses the "blue disc" CD-ROMs). It's still a marked improvement over the N64 original though.

The sound hasn't changed a lot from the N64 version though. The sound and music are pretty much the same, which is okay for the most part, but gunshots are particularly underwhelming (because the pistol actually sounds far more powerful than the tinny machinegun). There is voice acting in two different languages. I'd advise you to skip out on the English voices (they're incredibly awful, especially Steve in the tutorial) and just stick with Japanese. If you can't stand those either, they can also be turned off.

Outside of single-player, there is also multiplayer mode, which can either be played with four players via multitap, or against bots in custom matches or in an Unreal Tournament-style ladder mode. The bots don't use the same tactics as they do in SP mode though - it plays more like a first-person deathmatch game. You can still take cover and play tactically, but this isn't a good idea against bots, who will typically just run around and stop to shoot at people. The worst part is, making a kill can be irritating, because all players are invulnerable for a moment after getting hurt. That's okay for larger weapons like shotguns, so you can get to cover - but pistol kills can take forever, and the machine gun is next to worthless.

If you're in the market for a good tactical third-person shootemup, give Winback a look. Just be aware of the flaws.

7/10

[weasel]

kill.switch
"Do what you do best - think like a gun."

Platform: PC, PS2, XBox(?)
Developer: Criterion
Publisher: Namco Hometek
ESRB: T (Strong Language and Violence)
WSRS: The language is not as "strong" as the ESRB would let you believe - the worst you'll hear is the main characters saying "Damn it" or the enemies cursing as they dodge your grenades. There is no blood in this game at all, but there's a lot of shooting.

This here is the spiritual successor to Koei's WinBack (above) - it takes the innovative duck-and-cover gameplay to a new level, enabling you to take cover against just about anything, and lay down suppressing fire without even poking your head out.

It plays like just about any other third person shooter on the market. Kill enemies and progress through levels, occasionally pressing a button or placing C4 or manning a turret to take down some bad dudes. The change is the emphasis on taking cover. More than likely you'll get gunned down if you're not taking cover behind something. Holding the Cover button will flatten your character against whatever object he's facing. You can move while in cover, crouch, or dive between safe zones to get a better angle on your target. Or if you don't feel like poking your head out from behind that crate, lest it get shot off by the hordes of enemy soldiers out for your blood, you can always just let your gun do the talking - stick it around the corner and shoot at whatever's there. Or you can heave a grenade at them.

Your tools of destruction are somewhat varied. You get several assault rifles, an MP5 submachine gun (in both silenced and unsilenced variants), a grenade launcher, an M249 squad-assault weapon, an M1 shotgun, and a silenced sniper rifle. You also have four different types of grenades to throw - HE grenades (best blast radius), mini grenades (blast radius is lower but they can be thrown farther), sticky grenades (which cling to whatever surface they hit), and flash grenades (which cause enemies to freak out and shoot in random directions while you run up and bash them with your rifle). With the number of weapons at your disposal, sometimes it can be difficult to select whichever one best fits your situation - so often times you'll just use whatever is selected despite the tactical disadvantage it gives you. While many of the assault rifles feel the same (especially all 3 AK variants), this can occasionally be a problem when the game autoselects the sniper rifle, the grenade launcher, or the shotgun.

The game's plot looks promising at the start, involving two guys (who refer to each other as "Base" and "Control") that have erased a man's memory and turned him into a remote controlled super soldier. On occasion, you'll witness a portion of the unknown man's memory - you see more of it every time, though these scenes are completely without sound, which lends more mystery to what's going on (though it's incredibly confusing at first - I thought it was a bug in my copy of the PC version, but it also occurs on the PS2 version). (Addendum: Turns out that this is indeed a bug. You don't get any sound in the cutscenes if you have turned the music off - so no matter how annoying it gets, leave it on if you care about the plot!) The plot maintains this mystery throughout, until near the end of the game when the man regains his memory and has to undo what he did while he was being controlled. It's a good concept but I wish the plot were elaborated upon a little more.

The enemy AI is pretty clever, using many of the same tactics as you. They'll dive into cover, toss grenades, man turrets, even fire blindly around corners. Every kill is the result of careful planning and execution. Rambo players need not apply.

What the game lacks in fancy special effects, it makes up for with excellent texture art, good quality models, and very modest system requirements. A Pentium 3, 933 MHz with a GeForce 2 GTS 64 MB and 256 MB of RAM is able to run the game at 1024x768 at almost maximum framerate. On the PS2, there is little to no slowdown, and the game runs at a near-constant 60 frames per second. My only complaint is the game's field of view - while your character never gets in the way of your aim, the view feels a little too "zoomed-in" and makes it difficult to navigate on occasion.

The game's audio is where kill.switch falls short. Voice acting is half-decent ("Base" sounds like he's trying too hard to impersonate Solid Snake, and the protagonist is just trying too hard, period), weapon sounds are pretty powerful, but the music downright sucks. I wish the game had subtitles, too...it's hard to hear what's being said in some of the cutscenes.

I enjoyed kill.switch despite its flaws. It's a marked improvement over WinBack, but with enough polish and quality control, it could have been far better.

7.5/10

[duvel]

[Weasel, I don't think that goes here. I remember when kill.switch came out it received decent press.]

[weasel]

Ys Eternal: Ancient Ys Vanished Omen

Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: Falcom
Platform: PC, PS2 (as "Ys I & II Eternal Story")
Year: 2000
WSRS: I'd give this a T. Mild animated violence, and animated blood (which can be turned off). No sex, no swearing (not in the unofficial English patch anyway), and only minimal use of alcohol (I'm not even sure why that's a descriptor).

Possibly one of the most overlooked RPG series of all time, mainly due to its poor choice of platform - the first Ys game was only available to US audiences for the Sega Master System and Turbo Grafx 16 CD. In Japan, though, Ys is popular enough that the first game has been on over ten different platforms - including several 8-bit computer systems, a few CD versions, and three remakes for more advanced consoles (including the Sega Saturn).

Ys Eternal, however, is the best version yet - released for Windows PCs around 2000, Ys Eternal contains completely revamped 2D graphics, enhanced sound effects and music, and even a whole new town and an enlarged overworld. Even the gameplay is enhanced to some degree.

As the game begins, you (a swordsman named Adol) are steering your ship through a fierce storm. Your boat presumably sinks, and you wash up on the shore of Barbado Port. Seeing little to occupy you in town, you move north to the walled city of Minea, where a fortune teller takes you aside and tells you what you must do.

As you venture through the field between towns and dungeons, you'll notice one thing about the gameplay style of Ys - there is no attack button. You kill enemies by simply ramming into them with Adol. Of course, if you could just kill enemies by touching them, that'd make things too easy - touching them head on will still do damage, but you'll take damage as well. That's why you have to circle around them and hit them from the sides or behind. It sounds ridiculously simple, and that's the beauty of Ys - there's no absurd gameplay mechanics to bog down the player. Most of the game involves finding treasures and bringing them to the right place, or talking to the right people. Yet there is actually quite a bit of enjoyment to be found, with as simple as it plays. I dare say this would be a good game to initiate a person into RPG's.

Except for the fact that it still manages to present a challenge.

Even fighting the weak monsters at the beginning of the game, there is a fairly good chance that you'll die. Most of your fighting ability is determined by your equipment and experience level - and when you level up, you really level up. There are only 10 experience levels, and it does take a while to attain each one, but when you hit the next level, you gain so many new stats and hit points that there is a high degree of satisfaction.

Once you've figured out the whole deal in terms of gameplay, you'll be plowing through monsters like there's no tomorrow. Even if you don't need experience or gold, you might still find yourself searching the field for demons to plow through.

The visuals in this game are quite good. Though Falcom insisted on running this game at 640x480 with 16-bit color, the effects that are allowed are impressive for a 2D game. As you charge through monsters, you can see tiny little sword slashes from Adol, and monsters sort of explode into chunks when they die (as opposed to the old school "blink out" effect in the earlier versions of Ys). The tile graphics are very pretty, and the character artwork is absolutely beautiful (especially Feena).

Sound effects and music are also quite good, though the music doesn't quite match up to that of the TG16 CD audio. While a MIDI soundtrack is provided, the game comes equipped with wave recordings of the music as well. The MIDI's were probably designed for a specialized MIDI controller hardware, as they didn't sound particularly good on my Sound Blaster X-Fi.

Ys Eternal is pretty much in a league of its own in terms of action RPG's. I've heard countless comparisons to the Zelda games, but don't go in expecting anything close to that. This game has as much in common with Zelda as it does with Rogue - and that's not very much.

If you want a no-nonsense action RPG, though, Ys Eternal is the answer.

8.5/10

Notes: Ys Eternal was released only in Japan, and it comes in two "main" flavors - the original Ys Eternal, and Ys Eternal Complete, which includes this and the second game in "Eternal" style. NightWolve's English patch will only work with the Complete version of Ys Eternal.

[weasel]

Gungrave

Developer: RED Entertainment/Ikusabune
Publisher: SEGA
Platform: PS2
Genre: Third-Person Action
ESRB: M
WSRS: Well, my copy didn't come with its original case so I don't have the descriptors handy...so I'll make my own. Heavy animated blood, some swearing (in text only as the game's voices are still Japanese), and minor instances of drug/alcohol use.

From Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun, comes an original PS2 game featuring the most bad-ass protagonist since...ever.

The game casts YOU as "Beyond the Grave" (Grave for short), a man that died years ago but was resurrected (somehow) by a scientist known only as "Dr. T." You swear revenge against the syndicate that betrayed you, which means you get to plow your way through several levels filled with swarms of henchmen.

The very first thing you might notice about the game is how freaking stylish it is. The game takes its cues from anime (naturally), and everything here is rendered in cartoon style (though not cel-shaded). Cutscenes, while pre-rendered using the in-game models, bear the proper anime look and evoke Nightow's character designs perfectly.

Grave never speaks a single word or utters so much as a simple grunt through the entire game. He mainly communicates with his guns and his oversized coffin (which is chained to his wrists and can be used to club people around as well as launch rockets). I say again: the game is incredibly stylish. When you're hammering the trigger and firing Grave's guns at full speed, he does this crazy little dance while he's perforating everything. You can do Max Payne-style dives as well, which comes in extremely handy when dodging rockets.

The final part of Grave's arsenal is the Demolition Shot. You only start off with a single rocket blast, but you can unlock three more Demolition Shots (like my favorite, the Bullet Dance) to select from in game. To obtain Demolition Shots, you have to score massive hit combos with your guns and coffin. As long as every bullet hits something (whether that "something" be a person, a car, a crate, or even a supporting column), your Beats counter increases. Every 20 Beats you get contributes towards your Demolition Shot meter - when that maxes out, you get one extra shot. The Demolition Shots can also be used to restore Grave's health and shields at any given moment.

If I have one complaint about Gungrave, it would be the occasionally unwieldy controls. There is a fairly accurate auto-aim system in place, which makes it easy to line up your shots, but maneuvering Grave around can be troublesome. You use the left analog stick to move and turn (much like the default controls for Goldeneye). You also have to use the stick to determine which direction Grave dives when you press the X button (so your aim may be thrown off if you're trying to dive sideways). There is also a lock-on feature (which slows your shots but ensures that you never lose sight of the enemy unless they run behind a wall), but it's quite hard to get it to actually lock on to anything. There is also no auto-fire (at least, not unless you unlock it) so you're going to be mashing the Square button until it breaks.

The game's stylishness spreads to the relatively neat (but underdetailed) graphics, and the awesome music (I especially love the main theme, Gunlock, that plays in the intro movie), composed by Tsuneo Imahori (who also did the soundtrack for Trigun).

Pretty much the entire game reminds me of a very futuristic gangster revenge flick. It's sci-fi, but at the same time, it isn't. The closest thing I can say to describe it would be "cyberpunk", but it's not quite cyberpunk up to the Blade Runner/Shadowrun definition.

If you happen to find Gungrave at your local EB Games or Gamestop, by all means pick it up - I got mine for about $3 USD (along with the sequel, Gungrave Overdose, for another $6). Gungrave is extremely underappreciated and worth your time and money. While it might not live up to other, similar games like Max Payne, it's certainly satisfying (and stylish).

7.5/10

[weasel]

Eternal Ring

Platform: PS2
Developer: FROM Software
Publisher: Agetec
Genre: First-Person Action RPG
ESRB: T (violence, language)

FROM Software is probably most famous for its build-your-own-mecha action game, Armored Core. But back in the PS1 days, they also had a little series called Kings Field - a first-person action RPG that worked mainly from the Ultima Underworld template. Eternal Ring is essentially the spiritual successor to Kings Field (even though that series has long since continued, with PS2 and PSP sequels having been released since).

Eternal Ring casts you as Cain, an agent of the King. The King sends you to investigate the island known as "No Return" - leading you to the usual RPG staples of dungeons, monsters, and magic.

In playing the game, the first thing I noticed was how the voice acting really sucked. It's not quite House of the Dead 2 level suckiness, but it's generally awful and not very pleasant to listen to. The graphics also struck me as a below-average Sega Dreamcast game - while mostly typical for a game that was released less than a month after the PS2's launch (it even comes on one of those blue CD's instead of a DVD), it probably wasn't any more enjoyable to look at on the day it was released. Details in the areas are extremely sparse, with only the occasional landmark or interesting bit of architecture to aid in navigating the maze-like dungeons (and that doesn't really help much, either, because the dungeons can still be very difficult to get around).

Another major issue is the controls. The game requires that you have a PS2 Dual Shock 2 controller, but for reasons that I am not aware of, it does not let you use the analog sticks to move your character. Instead, the game uses the pressure-sensitive D-pad and shoulder buttons to move. If you like to move faster than an inch per second and actually be able to turn to face your enemies before they kill you, you're going to be pressing your D-pad really, really hard. Alternatively, you can turn off the Dual Shock 2 support and opt for a more traditional system where your turning speed increases the longer you hold the D-pad down, but the acceleration curve on that setup is too slow, meaning you'll start off turning rather slowly and gradually start turning faster. It gives me terrible flashbacks to the days of Powerslave on the Sega Saturn, where aiming was so difficult as to practically ensure one's death. So it's either injure your thumb, or die and end up throwing the controller at something and probably injuring yourself anyway.

There is one interesting gameplay element slipped in among the usual RPG fare - the ability to create magic rings. As you explore dungeons and kill monsters, you'll collect gems and empty bands. Combine the gems and one of the bands and you'll create a magic ring that will either enhance your stats or give you a new spell. There are about 100 unique rings in the game, if I remember right.

Unfortunately, the game's shortcomings pretty much blow this one unique mechanic to tiny meaty bits. The aforementioned controller issues, plus the very lacking graphics and audio, already make for a game that most people won't enjoy. As for the hardcore crowd, they'll probably get frustrated at the near-lack of save points - they are few and far between. Finding your way back to a save point can be difficult because of how plain and dull the dungeons are - you could easily get lost, wander into a room full of monsters, and die before you got a chance to save that hour's worth of gameplay.

So I suppose in summary, that Eternal Ring is not much good at all. The ultra-cheap price tag is very tempting (I got mine for $3) but even this game is not worth three dollars.

3.5/10

[commodorejohn]

Urusei Yatsura: My Dear Friends

Developer/Publisher: Game Arts Co. Ltd.
Platform: Sega Mega-CD
ESRB: Not rated

The only Urusei Yatsura game I've played that's much good (haven't played the DS game yet, but I doubt I will, as I don't really care about dating sims.) It's a point-and-click adventure in the old Mac "everything you click does something" style (you know, like the one Franklin adventure game...that sort of thing.) Given that it's in Japanese, has not been fantranslated, and is unlikely to be (more on that in a bit,) I can't figure out much of the plot, but it's an enjoyable game nonetheless.

GRAPHICS
I'll say this: I really don't think much of the Genesis video chip. 64 colors out of a palette of 512 just isn't that impressive, and 16KB of video ram gets eaten up pretty fast when in 4-plane tile mode. And when you stack it up against the video chip of its contemporary system, the SNES... True, some games like Sonic 3 did pretty neat stuff with it, but it's still pretty heavily limited. And although the Sega CD does add a video coprocessor the exact function of which I don't know, it doesn't improve the actual abilities of the video chip, just makes it easier to do complicated stuff with it, so we're still stuck with Genesis-level graphics.
That said, the graphics in this game are really good. The game does a good job of working around the video chip's limitations, and the graphics themselves are great; the whole game looks like an episode of the anime. I mentioned that it's in the style of the old Mac adventure games, and I really mean that: the attention to detail is impressive, and tons of things you wouldn't expect to be implemented as game objects do at least some small thing to amuse you, and there's a surprising number of all-out animated cutscenes (you know how FF7 had about half a dozen FMV clips and the rest of the game was crappy low-polygon graphics? This game doesn't suffer from that problem.) 9/10

SOUND
Here's where things get neat: the whole game is voice-acted by the original voice cast. There's actually almost no in-game text apart from the occasional street sign and the (presumed) chapter descriptions in the save/load screen. Unfortunately, this means that a fantranslation will come about somewhere around the time hell freezes over, since every line of dialogue would have to be redubbed - there's no subtitles to translate. On the other hand, I'd rather have no translation than hear what they would have done to it with the comically bad voice cast and translation from the English dub. The music is pretty good; most of it is on the Genesis sound chip and decent but not that memorable, but the opening and ending themes are actually CD audio tracks, a couple of not-too-shabby J-pop tunes. The sound effects are also pretty good, although there's a number of stock-ish ones. 7/10

GAMEPLAY
Like a lot of adventure games, it's a little hard to figure out what you're supposed to do, more so when you can't understand the dialogue. However, it doesn't suffer from this as badly as, say, the King's Quest series; even without speaking Japanese, I was able to figure out the first few item puzzles on my own with a couple minutes of thought. The big standout about the gameplay, though, is just how high the immersion factor is. Aside from the animated cutscenes, the whole game takes place through Ataru's eyes, Myst-style. The only menus in the game are the inventory screen and the save-load menu, and even these are made fairly transparent; the inventory screen shows Ataru and whoever's accompanying him looking over the available items, and the save-load screen is Ataru's journal. Couple this with the absence of dialogue windows or captions, and it's really quite immersive. 8/10

OVERALL
Overall, this game is a neat entry in the adventure-game genre, having a lot in common with other 68K-based adventures from the early 90s, and it's neat to see an adventure game for Sega CD that's not an FMV game. You'll enjoy it more if you're an Urusei Yatsura fan and/or speak Japanese, but I'd recommend taking a look regardless, assuming you have the time and bandwidth to download an ISO. 8/10

[klinger b goode]

ah right, i wanted to play that one when i saw it in egm like 15 years ago.

the GB urusei yatsura rpg wasn't too bad.