The Sega Saturn: A Retrospective

 

In my basement sits a sealed storage bin that holds my Sega Saturn and all the games I own for it. I really don’t have a reason to come back and play these games ever again. I’ve played them all a countless number of times, I’ve reviewed them all for my blog, and I have hundreds of other games in my backlog that I need to show some love to.

Not only may I never play these games again, I may actually never play my Saturn again, period. It was barely running when I put it into retirement. Last time I played it, I had to stack books on top of it because the lid wouldn’t stop popping open. Who knows if it will still be working in ten years, or however long it is before I decide to drag it back out and play it again? I’m sure I’m going to want to show this system to my son Channing at some point, but I have to brace myself for the idea that this may not be possible. My Saturn's playing days may be over.

Since the Saturn is the first system I own that I’ve officially “retired”, I’ve decided to take a little look back at the system that had such a big influence on me when I was a kid.

The 16-bit era was coming to an end and there were three new systems on the horizon: the Nintendo 64, the Sega Saturn, and the Sony PlayStation. My family had sided with Sega and its Genesis during the great 16-bit war. Back then I viewed Nintendo as an enemy. I certainly wouldn’t be buying a Nintendo 64. PlayStation? Sony made TVs and VCRs. What did they know about video games? My mind was set. I was going to get a Sega Saturn. Duh.

The Saturn came out in 1995, launching without any kind of 3D Sonic title. This was a disappointment to me, but I was certain it was only a matter of time before one was going to be released. Sega would never drop the ball like that. I wasn’t worried.

Even though I had been so excited to get a Sega Saturn, I didn’t have quite enough money saved up for it, so I decided to wait. The first time the price dropped, I was going to run out and buy one. But man, was that such a torturous wait. I decided in the meantime I would use a coupon I found in a video game magazine to rent an entire system from Blockbuster Video. Yup, back in the day you could rent entire video game systems from Blockbuster. My coupon was only supposed to be for five dollars off the system and two games of my choice, but the cashier misread it as if the whole rental itself would be just five dollars, both games included. I paid five bucks for an entire weekend of Bug! and Virtua Fighter. It was glorious.

I spent most of that weekend playing Bug! I liked Virtua Fighter and all, but I found it a bit too basic and boring for my tastes. Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter it was not. Bug!, however, I was fascinated by. It was a 2D side-scrolling game with some 3D elements. Instead of just going left or right, you could go up and down and take different paths through each level. To me this was absolutely groundbreaking. Each level was like a giant maze, filled with collectible items. I OBSESSED over this game, exploring every path and trying to collect as much as I possibly could. Not only was I having a blast playing the game, I was blown away by its graphics and its sense of humor. Bug! was the greatest video game I had ever played. It’s kind of laughable to think about in retrospect, but at the time it was 100% true in my mind.

I was never able to beat Bug! as I found the game to be quite difficult. I remember being so sad when I had to return that Saturn. I just wanted to play more and more and more Bug! until I couldn’t play it anymore. The Sega Saturn couldn’t drop in price fast enough.

Eventually, though, it did. I don’t know if it was a few months, a year, or what – but it did. And I rushed out and got one. I remember the day very specifically. My dad and my stepmother had told me they would give me fifty bucks if I stayed in my brother’s room for a week so his girlfriend could crash in my bedroom. She had gotten kicked out of her house and had nowhere else to go, so they had agreed to let her stay with us for a week. Understandably, they didn’t want her sleeping in my brother’s room. Hence: the fifty dollars. I gladly accepted the fifty dollars as I knew it was going to finally give me enough money to buy a Saturn. I’d been saving allowance money and gift money for months. I finally had enough.

After the week was up, I moved back into my room and immediately asked my parents to take me to Best Buy to get a Saturn. While we were out and about, they bought me a used TV for my room to replace the piece of crap I had in there. It was a major win! I even had enough money to buy an extra game along with my Saturn. It wasn’t Bug!, but it was a shooter called Solar Eclipse. I’d seen ads for it in video game magazines, and I’d seen how it had used real footage of actors to tell its story, like a movie. That enough was enough to convince me to get the game. At this point in my life, the most advanced games I’d played were for the NES or the Sega Genesis. I was ready for my world to be turned upside down. A NEW era of gaming, with real people and real actors. It was such an exciting time for me. It felt like the future was finally here.

I ran into one major problem when I got home. I didn’t have the proper cords to hook the Saturn into my TV. The Saturn came only with the red, white, and yellow A/V connectors. They didn’t come with a circular RF cable like the Genesis did – or the Saturn that I had rented. The new TV for my room didn’t have the little red, white, and yellow holes to plug the Saturn into. I couldn’t play the Saturn on my TV.

I knew that our family’s big TV in the rec room had the proper connection ports in the back of it to accommodate those red, white, and yellow cords. The only problem is that my parents were down there using the TV. I knew better than to ask them if I could come down and hook up my Saturn while they were watching Mad About You. It simply wasn’t going to happen. I ended up having to wait several long and hard hours for them to go to bed. When they did, I came running downstairs with the Saturn and all its cords bundled in my arms, held tight against my chest.

Setup only took me a few minutes. I plugged the power cord into the wall. I attached the red, white, and yellow cords to the back of the TV. I turned the Saturn on… and nothing.

What was wrong? I was on channel 3. I picked up the remote and changed to another station and back to test it out. Yeah. I was on channel 3 all right. So why wasn’t anything happening?

I switched the television to channel 24, where they were showing reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I paged through the instruction manual looking for something I may have missed. Maybe the TV needed to be on channel 2? Nope, that didn’t work. Maybe the cords weren’t plugged in tight enough. Nope, they were. Maybe I’d accidentally gotten the colors mixed up somehow? Nope, everything was connected as it should be.

I read every word in that instruction manual, visibly shaken, ready to start pulling my hair out as Geordi LaForge battled through fire and flames on the Enterprise. It wasn’t fair that after all this time patiently waiting, I wasn’t able to play my Sega Saturn. So close, yet so far.

I picked up the remote and played with the TV’s settings. I must have went through every button on that remote before I finally pressed input. The screen went black. What happened? I pressed it again. Just like that, I was looking at the Saturn’s menu screen. All I had needed to do was change the TV’s input to the proper setting.

I tossed the remote aside and picked up my Saturn controller. It wanted me to set the time and the date. That was weird, but cool too. Before I knew it, my game was starting up. Solar Eclipse. I remember watching that opening FMV sequence, completely awestruck. Yeah there had been a technological leap from the NES to the Sega Genesis, but that was peanuts compared to this. I had officially entered the F U T U R E.

The game’s menu screen popped up. I decided to check out the options. Oh, what’s this? Previews?

A video began to play. In this video, a nerdy man-child gets hammered by kickballs while his teacher makes fun of him and calls him a pansy. All the while, previews for Crystal Dynamics video games flashed on the screen. Off-World Interceptor. 3D Baseball. Gex. Legacy of Kain. Solar Eclipse itself. My jaw hit the floor. I had already fallen in love with my Sega Saturn, and I hadn’t even started playing a game yet. This video had proved something to me. Video gaming had hit its apex. Things couldn’t possibly get any better than this.

Back to Solar Eclipse. I played the game. And I played the game. And I played the game. I wasn’t very good at it, and in fact couldn’t make it past the second level. But wow. The graphics, the story, the FMV sequences. It was like I was playing a movie version of Star Fox, but with human characters.

As if Solar Eclipse wasn’t enough, my Saturn came with a “Bootleg Sampler” disc that had four playable demos on it along with several preview videos. One of the playable demos on the disc was Bug! I must have played through the level or two included on the disc dozens of times. Dozens, I say!

Just Solar Eclipse and the bootleg sampler were enough to keep me occupied for weeks. But still, each weekend I’d rent a new Saturn title. Clockwork Knight, Virtua Fighter 2, Panzer Dragoon I and II, Die Hard Trilogy, Johnny Bazookatone, Scorcher, Shining Wisdom, Albert Odyssey, Command & Conquer, Baku Baku Animal, Virtua Fighter Kids, Fighting Vipers, Virtua Racing, Virtua Cop I and II…. the list went on and on. I was so enamored by the Saturn that I even enjoyed the crummy games, like Street Fighter: The Movie and Independence Day.

Because renting games was a lot cheaper than buying them, my actual collection of Saturn games never grew very large. But I did still buy them from time to time. Alien Trilogy turned out to be a great purchase. Couldn’t play Doom on the Saturn, so I might as well play the next best thing, right? The Legend of Oasis and Nights into Dreams were a few of my favorites. I only ended up suffering buyer’s remorse from one title: Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj. While everyone hated the movie Congo, I thought it was fabulous. I saw it in the theaters twice. I liked it so much I even read the book. It seemed like a no-brainer to me that I was going to buy the game, especially because (as I just mentioned) – Doom wasn’t available for the Sega Saturn.

I had barely played the game two minutes before I realized my mistake. It was so clunky. The graphics were so bad. I could hardly even control my character. The game was TERRIBLE. But still, I stuck with it. I had spent my hard earned money on it, I wasn’t going to just not play it. Eventually I was able to beat the game, hating every second of it. But what did I do? I turned around and started playing it again. That’s just what you did back then. You didn’t have an endless library of video games at your fingertips. You played what you had.

Two games stand out in my mind, however, as being particularly bad. If I was to make a list of my ten least favorite video games ever made, these games would make the list: Space Hulk and Virtual Hydlide. I ended up renting both of these titles, and each one I ended up returning to Blockbuster 20 minutes later because they were so terrible. At the video store I claimed they didn’t work, and they let me rent something else instead. Naughty Dan! Liar! What made these games so bad, you may ask? Horrible graphics. Clunky game controls. No direction as to what you were supposed to do or where you were supposed to go. I hated every second of them. I think at the time I had rented these games I had already played Congo and I didn’t want to waste my time on something else that was horrible if I didn’t have to. So I took ‘em back.

One of the most influential Saturn games I played has to be the very first entry into the Tomb Raider series. I was absolutely in love with that game. The puzzles, the story, the level designs, and of course: Lara herself. What was not to love about the game? I played it religiously day and night. Fun fact – this is the first ever video game I can recall turning to the Internet to for help. It was that level in Greece with the rising water levels and all the alligators swimming around in the water. Holy shit did that stage stump me.

As much as I loved my Saturn, I quickly became all too aware of its limitations. The PlayStation and the Nintendo 64 both boasted better games and better graphics. When a game came out on all three platforms, the Saturn version was always the worst. And then they didn’t bring Tomb Raider II to the Saturn. I was like WTF. Everything changed when my stepbrother brought his PlayStation over to our house one random weekend and we rented Resident Evil. That game absolutely blew me away. It was like nothing I had ever played before. Scary, cinematic. It kept me on the edge of my seat. It was light years better than anything I had played for the Saturn. That one game alone made up my mind for me: I was going to get a PlayStation. I liked my Saturn, but I hadn’t yet stumbled upon anything as completely amazing as Resident Evil for this system. And still there were no Sonic games.

I got a PlayStation. I got a Nintendo 64. I turned all of my attention to those two systems. I hadn’t even had the Saturn a year or two and already I could see it was in a steady decline. I still rented games for it from time to time. Guardian Heroes, Three Dirty Dwarves, Mr. Bones. But the pickings became very slim, very fast. The system got a port of Sonic 3D Blast for the Sega Genesis, but no new Sonic game of its own. I had been really hyped for Sonic Xtreme, only to learn that the game got canceled midway through production. Seemed like Sega was waving the white flag on the Saturn.

At the end of the system’s lifespan I added a couple bargain bin games to my collection: Fighters Megamix and Sonic R. I even ended up (finally!) getting my hands on a used copy of Bug! But by then the writing was on the wall: the Saturn was toast.

Every night I cry myself to sleep because this game was never finished

The system did go out with a bang, however. I remember reading in the video game magazines how amazing Panzer Dragoon Saga and Burning Rangers were. These were two of the last games to be released for the Saturn stateside. They weren’t available to rent at Blockbuster. I hit up all the Best Buys, all the video game stores at the mall, Target, K-Mart, anywhere that sold video games. Could I find either game? No. I looked and looked and looked and could not get my hands on a copy of either title. Panzer Dragoon Saga I especially wanted to play, because all of the reviews had said it was the RPG of a lifetime – possibly even better than Final Fantasy VII which by this time I had played through many times.

I ended up giving up all hope that I could find a copy of these games. Now I see that people are selling them online for thousands of dollars. Oh man. If only I’d been able to find a copy of either of these games, I’d have priceless artifacts in my hands. But it’s not even the money I care about. I just want to play the games. I feel as if I won’t be able to find closure in my life if I don’t get to at least play Panzer Dragoon Saga. I know that sounds kind of sad, but it is true!

In retrospect, the Saturn was not the best video game system. It was technically inferior. It didn’t have a big library of great games. It didn’t even have the 3D next-gen Sonic game I had been hoping for. I don’t want to say the system was a complete failure, but its unsuccessful run definitely left a sour taste in my mouth.

Would I learn from my mistake? No. A few years later when the Sega Dreamcast hit store shelves, I ran out and bought one on day one. I was blindly loyal to Sega, what can I say? The Dreamcast would crash and burn even worse than the Saturn – and just like that Sega’s days as console creators were over. It made me sad.

As rocky as my relationship with the Saturn was, I still remember my time with it fondly. Renting the system and playing Bug! nonstop for an entire weekend. That first day I brought home my system and struggled to get it set up while watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. All the games I rented, all the games I bought. Really, a system is defined by its games and as maligned as the Saturn is, it had some great titles. Alien Trilogy, Fighters Megamix, The Legend of Oasis, Nights into Dreams, Panzer Dragoon, Solar Eclipse, Sonic R, Tomb Raider, Virtua Cop 2 – all these games hold a special place in my heart. Did I have some buyer’s remorse when I bought my Saturn back in the late 90s? Absolutely. Would I go back and change anything? Absolutely not.

Here's a complete list of every title I have played for the Saturn (demo versions not included). The games I own (there are only ten of them) are in bold.

Albert Odyssey: Legend of Eldean

Alien Trilogy

Baku Baku Animal

Bug!

Bug Too!

Casper

Clockwork Knight

Command & Conquer

Congo The Movie: The Lost City of Zinj

Dead or Alive

Die Hard Trilogy

Fighters Megamix

Fighting Vipers

Guardian Heroes

Independence Day

Johnny Bazookatone

Legend of Oasis, The

Manx TT Superbike

Mr. Bones

Nights Into Dreams…

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon 2

Scorcher

Shining Wisdom

Solar Eclipse

Sonic R

Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels

Street Fighter: The Movie

Three Dirty Dwarves

Tomb Raider

Virtua Fighter

Virtua Fighter 2

Virtua Fighter Kids

Virtua Cop

Virtua Cop 2

Virtua Racing

Virtual Hydlide

Wipeout

For a complete index of all my video game posts and reviews, click

HERE!

Video Game Review #260: Balan Wonderworld

Balan Wonderworld

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

Balan Wonderworld came out exactly one month ago on March 26th, making it the newest game I’ve ever reviewed for this blog. I almost never play anything brand-new anymore. What makes this game different?

Well, not much. I didn’t even know this game existed until I saw it appear on the GameFly website as a new arrival back in March. Immediately the art style and the interesting title grabbed my attention. I googled the game and saw that it was made by the same people who did Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights into Dreams. That was all I needed to hear. I put this on my GameFly queue, and within a day or two it was being shipped to my house.

I should have stopped to read the reviews for this game before so hastily adding it to my queue. If I had seen how poorly received this game was, I may have opted for something else. While this game isn’t as terrible as the reviews make it out to be, it still isn’t very good. Read on for my full thoughts.

 

Story:

This should be a short recap, because to be honest with you, I had absolutely no idea what was happening as I played this game. It doesn’t help that the disc arrived with no instruction manual, and the game itself literally explains nothing as you play.

Balan Wonderworld seems to draw a lot of inspiration from Nights into Dreams, which you would think would be a good thing. You’ve got animated characters who don’t speak navigating bizarre dream situations and fighting bizarre dream creatures. From what I could observe, you help people who have endured some kind of tragic event or have lived some kind of unfulfilled life. You do it by… going into their dreams and fighting off dark forces who have invaded their minds? I don’t freaking know. The game explains nothing.

All in all there are 12 worlds, meaning 12 people you have to help out. Along the way you encounter the character Balan, who was clearly inspired by Nights from Nights into Dreams. If you told me that these two series were related somehow, I would believe you without a doubt. But whereas Nights kind of made sense, this game doesn’t. In fact, I completely stopped paying attention after it became clear that this game’s storyline was 100% nonsensical. I’d look at my phone or do something else while the cutscenes played. It didn’t even matter to me anymore. I began to play for the gameplay and the gameplay alone. But to be honest with you, that isn’t very good either.

Gameplay: 

On paper this game should work. You’ve got 12 stages, each of which contains 3 levels – 2 normal levels and a boss level. You have to play through these stages, collecting Balan statues as you go. These statues act like the stars in Super Mario 64 or the puzzle pieces in Banjo-Kazooie. You need to collect them to make your way deeper into the game.

Gameplay itself is very simple. You control your base character, who can only jump and can’t damage enemies. As you play you collect different outfits that you change into. You can store up to three outfits in your inventory at a time. These outfits are what you use to solve the game’s puzzles and fight its enemies. A few examples of outfits are:

-          A spider suit that lets you climb spider webs

-          A dolphin suit that lets you swim through water columns

-          A grasshopper that shoots blades out in front of you to damage your enemies

-          A cat that allows you to float through the sky

-          A lizard that allows you to use your tongue to grab onto objects and pull you across chasms

-          A pig that does a butt-smash in mid-air to destroy blocks or enemies below you

So on and so forth. While this is fine in theory, it is also seriously flawed. You control each of these characters using the analog stick, which is expected. The problem is, you only use ONE button – the action button. So if you are playing as the blade throwing grasshopper, the action button launches your blades. You can’t jump. You can’t do anything else. All you can do is launch blades. If you encounter a platform that you need to jump on, you have to switch your outfit to another character, like the spider. If you don’t have any outfits in your inventory that allow you to jump, you have to backtrack until you can locate one. There are checkpoints located throughout each stage that allow you to access old costumes that you have saved, but I always found it to be a pain in the butt to use these changing rooms because they take so freaking long to load. They really couldn’t have come up with a better way to help you change costumes? Or at least given every character the ability to jump?

The constant costume changing definitely becomes a chore. If you get hit even once, you lose whatever costume you happen to be wearing. Sometimes in order to advance, you need a costume that you found in a previous level. If you get hit and lose your costume, you have to go allll the way back and re-collect the missing costume, and hope you don’t get hit again. Ugh.

Not to say this game is difficult. If anything, it is absurdly easy. I don’t know if this is geared towards kids or what, but I only “died” once or twice the whole way through. The boss fights in particular are just laughable. These bosses follow extremely predictable patterns, and all you have to do is hit them three times to kill them. There are an endless number of outfits which respawn in the boss arenas too, which makes these fights even more of a cakewalk.

If this game offers any challenge whatsoever, it is in the location of the Balan statues. Seriously. Some of them are SO hard to find, or hidden in ridiculously obscure locations. To collect many of them you have to just skip over them and come back when you’ve completed a later level and have the proper outfit to collect them. For example, in the first stage of the game you need the spider outfit to climb a web and collect a Balan statue, but the spider outfit doesn’t become available till later in the game. So you have to remember where this web is and come back when you’ve collected the spider suit. This is a pretty common thing in games nowadays, but for whatever reason it doesn’t quite work in Balan Wonderworld. I think a lot it has to do with the fact that it often isn’t clear which one of the dozens of suits you need or what exactly you have to do to collect these statues. I won’t lie – I had to look online MANY times because I was so stumped. Every single time I needed a certain number of Balan statues to unlock the next set of levels, I was short. Could I find the required number on my own? No. Unlike Mario or Banjo-Kazooie, which give you hints as to where to find the next piece you need, this game gives you nothing. Literally, nothing.

Another thing I hated about this game: the Balan bouts. Again this is a thing that on paper should have worked. It’s a simple bonus game where you have to hit the action button as your character’s shadow lines up with him. Do it a certain number of times, getting an excellent each time, and you unlock a Balan statue. I consider myself to be pretty good at quick-time or fast rhythm button pressing games, but even I struggled with these Balan bouts. It seemed like every single time I played one of these I would just randomly lose for no reason whatsoever. To make things worse, these Balan bouts disappear until you beat that stage’s final boss again. So if I lost a Balan bout on stage 5, level 1, I would have to play through all of stage 5’s levels, beating the boss at the end, before I could come back and do the Balan bout again. And if I happened to lose one more time? Gotta do it all over again. No. Just no. To make matters worse, these Balan bouts get REALLY lengthy towards the end of the game. You have to watch this big long sequence that you can’t skip. It is SO annoying. Easily my least favorite part of this whole game.

Last thing I’ll mention before I move on is the game’s overworld. It is a floating island filled with these puffy creatures that remind me a bit of the Chaos from Sonic Adventure. It is never explained what you need to do on this island, but as I played I figured it out slowly. You have to feed these puffy creatures the gems you earned in each level. Feed them enough and they’ll throw themselves into this big machine/tower thing that begins running a tally of how many creatures it has consumed. Once the tally hits a certain amount you unlock another level on the tower. What exactly this does or how it benefits you at all, I have no idea. I wasted a lot of time feeding this freaking machine only to look online and see that I was nowhere near completing it. I said fuck it and stopped even bothering. Seriously, you need to collect SO MANY gems to unlock each stage of this tower. I finished this game about four or five days ago, but I would STILL be playing it if I was trying to unlock the entire tower. I’d probably be playing it a month from now. No. Too big of a time commitment. Not happening. This game isn’t even fun to begin with. What makes you think I want to play through each level 90 times, collecting every gem in sight? Not gonna happen.

 

Graphics:

I’ve never been more conflicted regarding a game’s graphics in my life. On the surface it is a fun, colorful, vibrant cartoon-like world come to life. There’s a lot of fun lighting and water visual effects. Some trippy colors and shit. But when you really, REALLY look at the game it becomes less and less impressive. Yes, everything overall looks “nice”, but also very basic at the same time. Basic textures, basic environments. Enemy design is bland. Honestly, this game looks like it could have done on the Wii over ten years ago. Maybe that’s a bit too harsh, but probably very close to the truth.

Compare this game to something like the recently released Spyro and Crash Bandicoot collections and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

 

Sound:

If there is a bright spot to this game, it is its sound. The music is fun. There are a ton of catchy beats. As much as I hated the Balan bouts, the music for them is great and often got stuck in my head even when I wasn’t playing the game. The sounds effects are all really good too. Some of these effects (like when you collect a gem) sound like they’ve been pulled directly from Nights into Dreams. It definitely tickled my nostalgia bone in a good way to hear all these classic sounds one more time. 

Overall:

Ugh. I came into this review thinking I was going to give it a higher score than all the people who gave it failing grades, but the more I write the more and more I realize how much I dislike this game. It isn’t necessarily a horrible game or one that I hated playing. It is just SO flawed and SO dull.

I can’t possibly give this game a good score. But I’m not going to give it a failing one either. To me, this game wasn’t THAT bad to the point where I would give it an F. It was playable. It was fun at times. Overall it was pretty crummy, but I wouldn’t say it was a complete failure. I’m sure little kids who don’t know any better would probably love this game. That’s got to count for something, right? 

I’m grasping at straws here. This isn’t a good game. I can’t recommend it to anyone. It’s just not very good. This is such a disappointment coming from the minds who brought me Sonic the Hedgehog and Nights into Dreams, two classic series that hold a great deal of nostalgia for me. As I’ve said many times throughout this review – on paper or in theory this game and the things it tries to do SHOULD work. They just don’t. To me that’s just bad execution and bad game design. I can’t forgive that, no matter who made this game.

Overall:

D-

If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:

Nights Into Dreams

Sonic Adventure

Puppeteer

Super Mario 64

Banjo-Kazooie

Re-Review #13: Resident Evil

Resident Evil

GameCube

For my original review of this game, click

>HERE!<

I tend to play through some version of the original Resident Evil about every five years or so, and wouldn’t you know it – the pattern has held true. I last played this game back in 2016 and here I am in 2021 playing it again.

I actually hadn’t intended to play through this game at all, but my GameFly subscription was coming to an end and I needed to rent a game I knew I could quickly and easily beat – so I decided to check out the HD remastered version of this game for the PS4. I’m still going to go ahead and count this as a GameCube game though, because aside from some sharper graphics and slight control tweaks (bye bye tank controls!) this is still essentially the exact same game.

I’ve reviewed both the PS1 version of Resident Evil and the GameCube version before, so this should be a pretty quick re-review. I feel as if I am running out of things to say about this game!

Nothing has changed. This game has held up remarkably well over the years. Sure it doesn’t hurt that the graphics are sharper and everything is in HD this time around, but honestly the game already looked good anyway. What makes Resident Evil so great is its design and its gameplay. The mansion has to be one of my favorite video game locales of all time. I feel as if I know this mansion like the back of my hand, yet this game is STILL an absolute blast to explore. To me that speaks volume about its design – not just the mansion but the game itself.

This game does such a brilliant job at escalating things. It starts out as just a creepy mansion, then you add zombies, then you add puzzles, then you add dogs, snakes, sharks, hunters. You explore outside. You explore the guardhouse. You explore the cave, the lab. The game just gets crazier and crazier as you play. And you know what? I’m all for it.

While I have played through this game so many times now that it doesn’t scare me anymore, I still appreciate what it tries to do. The music, the haunting scenery, the jump scares, the dramatic camera angles. If I was playing this for the first time I am certain I would have been on-edge the entire game. That really says something to me considering this version of the game is 19 years old, and the original version is 25. That is some supremely enduring game design. I absolutely can’t WAIT until my son is old enough that I can introduce him to this game. It is going to be a glorious day in my life.

If I had to offer up one complaint (about this particular version of the game anyway), it is that I actually missed the tank controls. Too many times I’d run from one screen to the next only to have the camera angle change and my character get “confused” about what was happening. I’d end up running back the way I came, and then I’d try to adjust and I’d end up running back to the other screen, then I’d try to adjust and end up running back to the original screen again. Mostly this didn’t cause too much of an issue, but if I was trying to run away from or evade a certain enemy, you bet it caused me some trouble.

That’s really all I can say that’s negative about this game. I knew it was a great game coming in and literally nothing that happened during my two playthroughs (one as Jill and one as Chris, of course!) did anything to change that.

No matter if you’re playing the GameCube version of the game, the remastered PS4 version, or the original version on the PS1, you can’t go wrong with the original Resident Evil. I am once again giving it an A.

Why not an A+, you may ask? While I do find this to be a great game, the experience of it still doesn’t compare to my experience with the ’96 version for the original PlayStation. Honestly, I am not sure anything ever will. While this game boasts better graphics and all kinds of added content, my heart will always belong to the classic version of the game.

That’s really all I have to say about this game, but since this re-review is so short I’m going to go ahead and rant for a little bit.

Billionaires. Seriously, what are they doing with all that money? How has not a SINGLE one of them recreated the mansion from this game and turned it into an Escape Room-esque type of thing? What is wrong with you people? Get on it! I’ll even be your project manager. Hire me right now. There is no one more capable of running this project than me. I’ll even dress up as a zombie and live in it for you if that is what you want. It’d be a drop in the bucket as far as money is concerned. 

It’s just killing me that this mansion doesn’t exist in real life. We need to make it happen. Come on, moneybags. You know where to find me. Let’s go.

 

Overall:

A

Video Game Review #259: Resident Evil Zero

Resident Evil Zero

GameCube

Nostalgia Factor:

Considering that I’ve played this game from start to finish only one time in my life, I have quite the history with it. Resident Evil Zero came out in 2002, when I was 20 years old. I didn’t have a GameCube at the time, but I went out and picked one up a year or two later. By then, Resident Evil Zero was considered an “old” game, and I was able to find a used copy of it in the bargain bin at my local GameStop.

At this time in my life I was living with my mom after suffering a bad breakup with a girlfriend I was living with. It wasn’t long before I was dating someone else: Jessica, a woman I had met online. I’ve mentioned her in a few of my reviews. We played Super Mario Sunshine, Eternal Darkness, and Kingdom Hearts together – among other games. We didn’t necessarily play Resident Evil Zero together, but she did come over while I was playing the game a few times. She seemed really into the game. I remember getting stuck on one of the puzzles where you have to light candles below a series of animals in the proper order. We were so stumped that we had to log on to my mom’s dial-up internet to find the solution. Jessica wrote the solution on a small scrap of note paper, and we were able to use it to advance further in the game. I must have stuck the scrap of paper with the puzzle solution in the game’s case – because to my surprise nearly 20 years later I found that piece of paper in mint condition when I brought this game out to play it. Seeing that was a blast from the past!

Anyway I’ve played through nearly every Resident Evil title twice. Most of them - like the original game, the remake, Resident Evil 2, and Resident Evil 4 - I can safely say I’ve played dozens of times. Even the ones I don’t like that much, like Nemesis and RE 5 I’ve played through more than once. But not Zero. Why? I don’t know! It’s not like I dislike the game or have bad memories of it. How the heck did it take me nearly 20 years to come back to this game? It was just the perfect storm of other games to play, I suppose.

Well, in 2021 I finally returned to Resident Evil Zero – a game I hadn’t picked up since beating it about 18 years ago. I didn’t remember much about the game after all that time. If you had asked me, I would have described it as “the Resident Evil on a train.”

But there is more to it than that. And slowly but surely it all started to come back to me as I played. Read on for further thoughts.

 

Story:

This game serves as a prequel to the original Resident Evil. Rebecca Chambers and the STARS Bravo Team are dispatched to the Arklay Mountains to investigate a series of bizarre murders when their helicopter crashes. Rebecca escapes the wreckage and takes shelter on a nearby train that is oddly stopped on the tracks. It is here that she meets and teams up with Billy Coen, an escaped convict accused of murdering 23 people. Together they explore this mysterious train, which is filled with zombies and other creatures.

An attempt to destroy the train leads to it crashing outside an empty facility, which Rebecca and Billy explore. Turns out that this was a former Umbrella training facility. You play through a couple areas that seem like your typical Resident Evil retreads (a mansion, a sewer, a lab, etc) before you end up destroying the main bad guy, who uses leeches as his primary form of attack. The facility explodes, Billy escapes as a “casualty” of the conflict, and Rebecca wanders from one nightmare into another as she discovers the mansion from the original Resident Evil game. Funny how she never mentioned any of these crazy events to Chris at all, huh?

Anyway, the end. There’s not much that is too horribly deep or thought-provoking about this game’s story. It gives you a little background information on Umbrella and some of their genetic experiments, but that is about it. Continuity seems like it could be an issue, if you’re really THAT wrapped up in the lore of Resident Evil. But I didn’t care about any of that. I just wanted to be entertained and for the most part I was.

 

Gameplay:

At first glance this game looks and feels like one of the PS1 era classics. Tank controls, similar menu screen, similar control scheme, similar camera angles. But it quickly becomes clear that this game is attempting to do something different. I’ll talk about the two main differences first.

The first difference is that this is the first Resident Evil game to abandon the “chest” system used in previous games. In this game, if you run out of space in your inventory you simply drop the item on the ground. The item will be marked on the map in case you want to come back and pick it up later. Say I need to pick up a key that I need to unlock the next area of the game, but I don’t have any space in my inventory. I have two first aid sprays, so I decide to drop one of them to make room for the key. I can leave the room, use the key, and come back to pick up the first aid spray and add it back to my inventory. In other instances you’ll find yourself being forced to leave items behind since you just simply don’t have room to bring everything along with you.

This system can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that the item box system is just so much easier. This way involves a lot of backtracking and being forced to abandon precious ammunition and health items because you simply don’t have room to bring them along. Plus your inventory space in this game seems smaller than the usual Resident Evil game, and you have guns and other items that take up multiple spaces in your inventory. It can be quite the hassle going back and forth trying to micromanage your inventory spots when in the good ole days you could just throw them in an item box and not spend a second’s thought worrying about them.

The good part of this is that in the short-term this can be a very helpful tool. If you need to grab a key item but don’t have space for it, you don’t have to worry about backtracking to a save room and using the chest to clear up spaces. Just drop something and grab what you need to grab. Plus, the OCD part of me enjoyed creating “item rooms” where I’d dump all my items and use the room like a hub where I’d come back and manage my inventory. If you asked me, I do prefer the item box method of inventory management, but I don’t think that this way is as bad as people make it out to be.

The other big difference between RE Zero and other classic Resident Evil games is that this game features the buddy system. You don’t just control Rebecca, you control Rebecca AND Billy. You can switch back and forth between the characters any time you want. Using one character, you can tell the other one to either stay behind or come along with you. There’s little actual utility in traveling around with Rebecca and Billy together at all times, as whichever character you aren’t controlling will wildly waste ammo or get in the way or get hurt. I usually have one stay behind while I explore with the other.

This gimmick, while fun at times, really only comes in handy when solving puzzles. I appreciate that they tried to do something different, though, both in the character-switching and the new item system. It definitely makes Resident Evil Zero unique and memorable, setting it apart from other status quo RE games that do the same thing and use the same tired formula over and over again.

Love the changes or hate them, almost everyone seems to have some kind of strong opinion on them.

 

Graphics:

Even though this game is nearly 20 years old it still looks really good. It is easily one of the best looking classic RE games, right up there next to the remake of the original Resident Evil. The GameCube definitely did wonders for the graphics of this series.

Characters are detailed and sharp, but the 2D environments steal the show. They are just stunning. The fine detail put into these environments is top of the line. Some of these areas almost look photo realistic. Throw in some awesome environmental effects (rain, lightning, the train shaking, etc) and you’ve got one impressive looking video game.

The only area of the game that shows its age are the cutscenes. Man, some of them are just laughably bad and outdated. I’m not complaining, though. It gives the game that sweet B movie charm that the early part of the series is known for. I love it.

 

Sound:

This game’s music and sound effects are right up there with the very best of the classic Resident Evil games. Moaning zombies, your character’s footsteps, the bloopy bloops when you navigate the menu: this game is pure classic Resident Evil. The voice acting isn’t too bad either, for once. 

If I had to complain it would be that this game doesn’t quite have as iconic a musical score as, say, Resident Evil 1 or 2. But the game’s music is still darn good. It helps create a tense and creepy atmosphere for everyone playing. All the small touches are nice, too. The rumble of the train, the crackle of fires. You can easily immerse yourself in this game and completely forget about the real world.

 

Overall:

I had a fun time with this game. I can’t believe it took me so long to come back and play it! I think its difficulty may have played a factor. I remember struggling with this game the first time I played it (a long time ago) and I definitely struggled this time around too. It may be the hardest classic Resident Evil game I have ever played. I was constantly either almost out of bullets or almost out of health items. I had to ration like I’ve never rationed before, often reloading save points if I felt I had wasted too much ammo or taken too much damage in battle. But you know what? I didn’t mind this at all. It’s called survival horror. Kind of cheapens things if they are too easy, don’t you think? This game is definitely not too easy.

Is Zero as good as some of the all-time classics in the series like 1, 2, 3, Code Veronica, etc? It is debatable. I wouldn’t put it above 1 or 2 but I definitely enjoyed it more than 3. I haven’t played Code Veronica in AGES so I’ll refrain from commenting until I replay that game (which I recently just purchased, actually).

If you love the Resident Evil series I don’t see any reason why you wouldn’t like this game. Yeah, the item management system and the dual character thing may turn some people off, but neither of these ruin the game for me. Like I said before, they give Zero a unique identity and personality. This game wouldn’t be the same without them, for better or worse.

So yeah. I liked it. I don’t think this game will go down as an all-time classic, but at the same time I don’t think it is trying to be one. It’s a fun, quirky, often overlooked entry into what I consider one of the best video game franchises ever made.

Is it great? No. Is it good? For sure. Should you play it if you are a fan of the series? 100%

I can’t guarantee it will be your cup of tea or not, but personally I enjoyed it – flaws and all. Hopefully you do too.

Final Score:

B

 

Believe it or not, this was my tenth review of a Resident Evil game. Here are the others:

Resident Evil: Director's Cut

Resident Evil 2

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Resident Evil (remake)

Resident Evil 4

Resident Evil: Revelations

Resident Evil 2 (remake)

Resident Evil 3 (remake)

Resident Evil VII: Biohazard

Re-Review #12: Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn

PlayStation 4

For my original review of this game, click

>HERE<

I first played through Horizon Zero Dawn a little over 2 years ago. I absolutely loved the game, and I ended up giving it a perfect review score of A+. I always knew that someday I was going to return to Horizon Zero Dawn and play it again, but I had no idea it would be so soon.

In 20202 my wife and I welcomed our first baby to the world. As a new parent, it was quite the hectic time for me. All of a sudden I found myself with no spare time to play video games or attend to any of my favorite hobbies and pastimes. Since I am the type of guy that fully invests himself when he plays a video game, I didn’t want to start up a brand-new game that I was going to constantly be distracted from by the baby. So I figured I’d play something I had already played before. I settled on Horizon Zero Dawn.

Normally I am not a New Game + person, but because I had played through this game so recently I figured I’d give it a shot for once. If anything, it would earn me an extra trophy on the PlayStation Network. Plus, this time around I could focus more on the game’s story since I remembered combat being somewhat difficult the first time around.

At first, I regretted my decision. I was destroying enemies and carving them up and left and right. The game was offering no challenge to me whatsoever. Sure, I was able to focus on the game’s story, but I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I was losing too much of what had made the game such a fun experience for me the first time around. Without that feeling of fear or being on edge, because any enemy encounter could kill me, the game became too easy. And thus: less enjoyable.

Plus, the game’s story itself had lost some of its magic for me. As I played, I found myself simply going  through the motions. I wasn’t enjoying myself. I wasn’t having fun. How could my mind change on an A+ title so quickly?

As my interest in the title waned, so did my time playing it. Days and weeks would go by between playing sessions. As the baby started to develop a normal sleep schedule, I found myself with more time to play video games again. I renewed my GameFly subscription and put Horizon Zero Dawn on the backburner for several months while I turned my attention to newer and flashier games.

2020 turned into 2021. March came around and I decided I was going to cancel my GameFly subscription and start focusing on playing and reviewing my backlog of games again. Well, I am not the type of guy who likes to leave loose threads dangling when it comes to video games, so I made up my mind that I was going to come back and finish Horizon Zero Dawn before I played anything else. And that I did.

Luckily I was able to jump back into the game just as it was getting good. It wasn’t long before Aloy encountered Sylens for the first time. From that point on, I was hooked. The story really grabbed me this time around. The Faro Plague, the Zero Dawn Project, the audio and the holo logs, Dr. Sobeck, all of it. Even though I already knew what happened based on my first playthrough of this game, I really was digging it this time around. I played it every day religiously for about a week. And then all of a sudden the game was over. It seemed really short in my mind, but I had to realize I had been playing this game off and on for about a year. I must have made better progress initially than I had thought! The fact that I skipped some of the side quests and didn't explore 100% of the map this time around, may have had something to do with it as well.

This game’s story really takes quite a long time to get going. I couldn’t care less about the tribes and the hunting lodges and the Sun King and all the NPCs you have to help as you explore the world map. All of that stuff is just, well – meh, at best. Things didn’t take off until I started digging up what happened to cause the apocalypse that destroyed humanity, and the resulting project that arose to save humanity. That shit was fascinating to me, and was the real heart of this game in my opinion.

Still, even as I began to really enjoy the game’s story on my second playthrough, I couldn’t fully embrace its combat. It’s so clunky and poorly designed. Maybe I didn’t notice how bad it was the first time I played this game two years ago, but this time I had just finished playing Ghost of Tsushima – and it couldn’t be more obvious that Horizon Zero Dawn can’t hold a candle to that game’s combat and overall gameplay.

Whenever it is that this game’s sequel comes out, I hope that they’ve fixed the combat to make it more smooth and not so clumsy and awkward.

All in all, I still consider Horizon Zero Dawn to be a good game. Amazing graphics, atmosphere, storyline. Top of the line stuff. Am I as infatuated with this game as I was when I first played it two years ago? Absolutely not. This game was new and exciting back then. It seems to lose most of its magic when I went back to play it a second time. Which is kind of a shame, really. I had it all built up in my mind as this wonderful, A+ title. Now it doesn’t even get a grade in the A range.

There is no question that this is a good game. I would even say it is a really good game. But a great one? Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh……

 

Final Score:

B+

Video Game Review #258: Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima

PlayStation 4

Nostalgia Factor:

This game isn’t even a year old, and I had never played it before, so I don’t have much to write here as far as nostalgia goes. I didn’t even know anything about this game at all until I heard some people talking about it at work, and I decided to look it up. I had never seen a preview of this game, hadn’t read any hype about it, nothing. But it looked good to me, and my coworkers had nothing but good things to say about it, so I decided to check it out.

 

Story:

You control a samurai named Jin Sakai, whose home island of Tsushima is invaded by the Mongols in the year 1274. Jin joins his fellow samurai as they attempt to drive the invading Mongol forces away from the island, but they are hopelessly outnumbered and are quickly slaughtered by the Mongols. Jin is wounded and left for dead.

He awakens several days later after being nursed back to health by a woman named Yuna, only to find that the island is now under Mongol control. The whole game turns into one giant struggle to liberate each section of Tsushima from the Mongols using any means necessary, including “unethical” means like poisoning enemy forces and sneaking around and killing them from the shadows, which goes against the samurai code. As Jin explores the island, liberating it village by village, he draws more people to his cause. His legend begins to grow, and he earns the moniker “the ghost of Tsushima” for his silent and deadly killing ways.

His success comes at great cost, however, as he has to cope with defying the samurai code. His tactics draw the ire of his honorable uncle, forcing Jin into a conflict not only with the Mongols but his own flesh and blood.

This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as this game’s story goes. As you play, you’ll encounter unique individuals that you assist on various quests, such as searching for missing family members or seeking to take vengeance on traitors who have jumped ship to the Mongol side of the war. There’s lots of character development to be found here. Lots of colorful and interesting personalities you come across. I wouldn’t say the story is too horribly deep or fantastic (there is so much murder and death and betrayal in this game that you become immune to it after a while), but it has its moments. I may have cried at one point.

Gameplay:

If you’ve played any open world games in the last few years, you should know how this works. Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Spider-Man, the Arkham games, Grand Theft Auto, etc. – they all follow the same basic formula. There is nothing too new or groundbreaking to see here. You have a map of the island. Everywhere you haven’t been yet is covered by clouds on the map. As you explore, the map opens up. You can find villages to liberate, people to talk to, quests to take on, Mongol patrols to eradicate, so on and so forth. The map is huge and bustling with activity everywhere.

Instead of collectible items that you must discover, the game often uses secret locations instead. For example, another game may mark a secret item that expands your health with a ? on the map that you have to find. In Ghost of Tsushima, the ? leads you to a hot spring where can rest and reflect on your journey. After a brief butt-nekked cutscene, your health meter expands. There are other hidden (but repetitive) secrets to find as well, including Fox Shrines where you follow a red fox to a shrine that you must honor (make sure you pet the fox afterward!). Other common secret locations are bamboo stands where you learn new sword strikes and meditation sites where you compose haikus. I would have liked to see a little bit more diversity with some of these secret locations, but that is one of my few complaints about this game. It seemed like every other ? on the map was another darn fox shrine.

Use your horse to traverse long distances as you explore the island. And don’t let the word “island” fool you. This is a HUGE game map, bigger than many open world games out there. But getting around isn’t too much of a hassle since every time you make it to a new location, you can then fast travel to it.

The game map is filled with items that you can use to trade with merchants or to upgrade your outfit and your weapons. You also level up as you gain experience, and as you level up you accrue points that you can use to unlock new abilities on your character tree.

All pretty standard open world stuff here, right?

Let’s talk about what makes Ghost of Tsushima different: its combat.

This game has a very intricate combat system. You are armed with a blade and a bow, but you pick things up like poison darts and throwable projectiles as you get deeper into the game. You start with one basic fighting stance. You have your standard weak and strong attacks and a block button. Time your blocks right to parry enemy attacks and gain the upper hand on them. You are going to NEED to master this technique if you want to do well with this game. As you play, you unlock different fighting stances. At first I didn’t understand how it worked, but I quickly realized that different enemies are weaker against different stances. If the Water Stance is proving ineffective against enemies with shields or giant brutes, try switching to another stance. This is another skill you will NEED to master if you want to beat this game. It can get quite difficult sometimes.

When you aren’t engaged in one-on-one combat, you can sneak around and use stealth to pick off your enemies one by one. I became a master of the bow, silently killing all enemies around the perimeter of each Mongol outpost, sneaking my way towards the center while I hid in the tall grass and snuck around, quietly slitting enemy throats. You can throw things like firecrackers and wind chimes to cause distractions and pull the guards away from where you want to be.

I can’t stress how fun this all is. Ghost of Tsushima really nailed the combat system. Whether it is one-on-one fighting or sneaking through the shadows, I never got tired of this game. I even realized how repetitive everything was as I played, but I still didn’t care because it was such a blast to handle.

 

Graphics:

My god. This may be the best looking game I have ever played. From the game’s opening cutscene I was in complete awe of how amazing it looked. I’m a big fan of the “look” of feudal Japan as it is, but seeing it brought to life in this manner was just so amazing. The colors, the beautiful scenery, the trees, the buildings, the ruins, the shrines, the ocean, the sky, the flowers, the wind, the way each blade of the grass sways in the wind. It is just so incredible looking. And I mean SO incredible looking.

The characters look really good, their animations are smooth. Some of the cutscenes are incredibly cinematic and match the production level of big time Hollywood movies.

In case you can’t tell, I thought this game looked terrific.

 

Sound:

The game’s sound is great too. The voice acting is top of the line. Throughout my time with Jin Sakai I came to grow attached to him and his voice. The music, while not offering any catchy tunes that will become iconic over the years, is very well-done. It always seems to match perfectly with what is happening on screen at all times. When it is night time and you’re at a serene, beautiful lake with the moon reflecting in its waves, the music matches the game’s ambience. When you are fighting in an intense battle, the music ratchets up.

I think what may be the most impressive about this game’s sound are all the little things. The sound of the wind, the sound the tall grass makes as you walk through it, the drip of water in an empty cavern. It’s all just so good. Both visually and with the game’s audio you are completely transported directly into the world of the game.

Overall:

In case you can’t tell, I really liked this game, and I liked it a lot. I mean, a LOT LOT.

As I played I was just constantly awestruck by the scope of the game. The story, the setting, the music, the graphics, the combat, the exploration. It’s all so incredibly well done, and I loved every second of it. This is a near-flawless title. I couldn’t help but compare it to other, similar games and how much better it is than them. As good as Red Dead 2 is, it has MAJOR pacing issues and could have learned a lot from this game. As good as Horizon Zero Dawn is, its combat could have learned something from this game, as well as its inventory management system. As good as the Arkham games were, etc etc. All of these games could have learned something from Ghost of Tsushima. This game doesn’t do anything new or groundbreaking, no, but it perfects the formula introduced in previous open world titles.

The only things that bothered me about this game were minor, like how many of the ? icons were Fox Shrines, or how formulaic it felt liberating the villages one by one, or how repetitive the combat became. But none of these things were enough to seriously put a damper on my enjoyment of this title. Once I dove into Ghost of Tsushima, I couldn’t put it down. Every free second I had (which isn’t much considering I have a 10 month old baby), I spent playing this game.

I can see why people were upset that this game lost out on 2020 Game of the Year to The Last of Us Part Two. As much as I liked that game, I thought Ghost of Tsushima was MUCH better.

There were moments where I thought to myself: “Is this it? Is this my new favorite game of all time? Can Final Fantasy VII finally move over?” While I am not sure about that, this game has come closer than any other game in recent memory. If you know me and my love of video games, that should be all you need to know. You need to play Ghost of Tsushima if you haven’t already.

NOW.

Overall:

A+

Click >>HERE<< for a complete index of all my game reviews!