"Everybody walk the Dinosaur"

I remember playing the original Dino Crisis, and what it did to make me a survival horror fan. That's why I was so thrown off when I played Dino Crisis 2. It was so different from the first one, that it turned me off for a while. Years later, I ducted off my copy, and finally gave the game due justice. And I gotta say, it has to be one of the best pure-action games I have played on the PS1. Capcom took aspects from their RE franchise, and used their positives, while straying away from most of the negatives.

First there's the graphics. While RE's pre-rendered backgrounds looked and felt dated by the time RE3 rolled out, the pre-rendered jungle backgrounds look beautiful, with a level of detail that polygons just couldn't get. Even the indoor levels (which are fewer than previous Capcom games) look great.

Next there's the sound. Capcom made a huge jump from the awful dialogue of RE3, to dialogue that sounds alot cleaner and better delivered. Aside from a few "Engrish" translations in the text, the game has better production value as far as sound than games past.

And then there's the crown jewel of the game: the gameplay. Capcom managed to actually create level designs that make the best out of the tank controls of RE3, and it works. Gone are the close-knit rooms and awful cameras of RE3, and in place are long stretches of straight path with few corners to have to tank around. instead of focusing on slow fetch quests and spooky jump moments, DC2 focuses on one thing: killing dinosaurs. Added to the DC control scheme are rolls/dodges and melee moves, making the cation stall as much. As far as the camera, gone are the corner shots that block your view. The cameras are set up so you can see both your enemies and the path. Also added are points that can be exchanged for weapons and health. These point are collected thanks to the new combo system, as well as bonuses for counters and going through areas unharmed. Rounding out the bunch is the variety in gameplay. You're not only fighting dinosaurs in the jungle, but shooting from the back of a boat, piloting an underwater sub-suit, a tank running from a T-Rex, and much more.

Simply put, this is as action-packed as any game on the PS1. IT manages to keep action high and constant, without seeming braindead.

Just Not Scary

I have been the biggest Silent Hill fan, ever since I playes the first Silent Hill on the PS1, and have been waiting for this portable version to hit the PSP. Unfortunately, when I finally got my hands on it, I was disappointed to find that this was not the Silent Hill I remembered.

For those uneducated, Silent Hill Origin is a prequel staring a truck driver named Travis Grady. He stumbles upon franchise familiars Alessa, Dahlia and the Order, and thus sets off on a quest that unravels the origins (get it) of the whole Silent Hill story. Unfortunately, in trying to craft an original plot for this iteration, the developers added a new feature that all but kills any sort of fear to the game.

One of the hooks of the story is that the evil world (Silent Hill's "Other World") is crossing over through the mirrors. This in turn translates into a new feature where Travis has the ability to travel from the normal world to the other world through mirrors placed around the town. The problem with this is that one of the hallmarks of the franchise was the fact that your character never had control over when he traveled to the other world and back. It was completely random, and felt more like you were traveling in and out of your sanity than moving from two different real worlds.

By splitting the two worlds apart and making access easy, it makes the other world less scary because you can easily escape it. More so, it feels more like all the other world does is arbitrarily extent exploration without adding any real new areas. It really underminds the terror that Silent Hill's hallmark "Other World" has created for itself.

Another lesser strike against the game is the combat mechanics. Back from the dead od past Alone in the Dark games is the ability to fight enemies with your bare hands. It's a cool feature. But also returning from previous SH games is the unlimited inventory that allows you to hold ungodly amounts of stuff on your person. This, combo-ed with the degrading weapons that break after long term use, just makes the game feel even less scary. Degrading weapons is a good way to give a sense that you could be at a loss against your enemies. Unfortunately, you trip over weapons all the time. And since you can hold an unlimited amount of weapons on you, you're never without a weapon. Had they brought back the limited inventory of SH4, it would have made for more tense gameplay, where you are constantly needing to find a weapon. It really doesn't help the already mundane feel of the game.

Though these are big problems with the feel of the game, the overall mechanics are fine. Controls are smooth, gun-play and hand-to-hand combat are solid, and graphic are suitable, although due to the confines of the hardware, the graphics have a flat look compared to the later SH games on the PS2. This looks alot like a High-res version of the original SH. Audi-wise, the game is top-notch, especially the random break of story dialogue during gameplay.So all-in-all, it;s a competent game that just isn;t as scary as the likes of SH2 or even SH4.

Greastest Adventure Game

Very rarely do I consider any game to be one of the greatest. But I am confident when I say that Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is one of the greatest adventure game released in the last generation. Sand of Time did for the adventure genre what Tomb Raider did for the genre on the Playstation. Everything about the game is so solid and so refined, that it's in a class of it's own. Prince of Persia took the large scale environmental puzzles found in games like Soul Reaver, and added brand new elements to them. One big element was time manipulation. The price could slow down time and affect the world around him in ways that would help solve puzzles. It was so inventive that it made solving each of the puzzles fun and exciting. Not to mention it made combat that much more fun. Most people stress that the combat was slow compared to games like Devil May Cry, but that is what made it the more interesting. It wasn't about flailing your sword around like a madman. I t was about timing every move you made, or face the game over screen. Thankfully, the rewind feature made combat less painful. The one element that struck me the most was the writing. Everything the Prince said was so serious and so funny at the same time. He was a genuinely likable character. Combine that with a beautiful love story written in, and I challenge anyone not to feel for the Prince by the end of the game. It disappoints me that the next chapters in the series are so dark and gratuitous, because Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was so light-hearted that it was a game everyone could enjoy. To me, that is the true hallmark of greatness.

Going nowhere fast

When I first saw Coded Arms at TGS'04, I was ecstatic. Finally there will be a fully functioning FPS on the handhelds. I even got this game as my first PSP game. At first I loved the game. But like X-men 3, this game gets slowly worse overtime. The problem with Coded Arms is that for everything it does right, I gets something else wrong. For one thing, they got the controls right. If you ever played any of the FPSs on the N64 or Dreamcast, then this game won't be that hard to get used to. Also, the graphics hold up quite well in this game too. And you know what, even the concept of the game is genuinely cool. You play a soldier who gets doenloaded into a computer to fight a virus. You can do other cool things like upgrade weapons (which there are a lot), and collect cool armor.They could have do so much with that. Unfortunately, they didn't. The game faults on one thing, Pace. The storytelling in this game is so flat as to be non-existent. The best they do is show still shots with lame scrolling text. And they only do that at least three times out of the entire game. Then theres the level design. You play nine or so levels in the entire game. This gets splits into three sections with three levels per section. Each section is the same. You pl;ay one temple level, one factory level, and one alleyway level. Sure the level layout generates randomly every time you restart the game, but it's still the same three levels three times over and over. And the pace of the levels is worse. You have to clear a room of enemies before you move on, and most of the levels are uber-linear. Sure there are some really cool boss fights, but that's no excuse for the lame "ending". Here it is (spoiler be damned). After you beat the nine levels, you play the "infinity" level. This is where you play a random mishmash of past levels continuously. I played thirty levels of "infinity" before I snapped and gave the game back to gamestop. Don't be fooled, this game is bad. Hopefully konami can nail the sequel down.

why?

Remember the movie Robocop. It was a braindead shoot'em up that any director in the 80's could have crapped out in their sleep. But deep down inside you liked it becuase it bought something new to the game: a robot cop. That is how I felt when I played the first Dead to Rights; it was a braindead Max Payne knockoff that got alot of praise because it brought soemthing new to the field, mini-games. You could shoot waves of enemies, then play a timing lockpicking game. So what happens when you take that which made your game different? You get Dead to Rights 2, a braindead, average shooter. So what does this have to do with the PSP DTR game? Well unfortunately, Namco managed to drive this series farther into oblivion with this game. Every aspect of this game is just bad. All you do is lock onto your enemies, shoot, and once you clear the room, kick down a door. Lock, Shoot, Kick. That's it, and it's still bad. The in-game camera is so bad that you never get a right angle on your target. This si the only reason this game is challenging. Otherwise, this game would be mindnumbing. The story is clumsily told through pseudo cutscenes at the end of the level. Then there the timeframe. If you paly this game twice (once in normal, once in hard), then you'll not only have absorbed all of the play value of this game, but you'll have done it in 4 hours. Nevermind the multiplayer, you'll never find another person who actually bought this game around you, ever. Simply put, if you bought the game, you payed way too much for it. If you rented it, you'll have rented it for more than you'll need it. This is yet another lesson in how to ruin a good game MORE.