An HD Coat of Paint‏

Last week, I talked about the new Oddworld remake that just came out. Of course, this is a PS1 remake, so the developer—Just Add Water—waited long enough and really re-made the game: new graphics, animations and voiceovers.

Last generation, we experienced a similar thing, where PS2 games were remastered for the PS3. Upscaled graphics, and more importantly, an HD, 16:9 presentation made the purchase worth it. Games like Kingdom Hearts were actually built almost from the ground-up, and many seemed to have included a couple of games all in one package (Jak & Daxter, God of War, Final Fantasy X/X-2). The value is there for me since going from 4:3 to widescreen looked great, especially with new or upscaled graphics. Seriously, try playing your PS2 games now: they really don’t look that great anymore.

A nice article on Kotaku made me think: are we going to see the same trend on PS4? The Last of Us got a remastered edition. The PS4 edition was thoroughly improved with updates such as higher resolution and better framerates. But in the end, is it worth it? Maybe so, for someone who has not yet played the game. I myself wouldn’t mind returning to the game as it was easily my favorite game of 2013. With that in mind, the game was barely made 1 year ago. Moreover, I don’t think jumping from 720p to 1080p is much greater than the move from 480p to 720p. Maybe it would be if I had a 50”+ television, but the original PS3 game looked great on my 40” 1080p screen.

Anyway, I digress. My real point is: will The Last of Us open the floodgates for remastered last-gen games? I feel like it will, and I’m very indifferent about it. On one hand, some games may play much better given the better hardware; but on the other hand, I bet some developers will put a half-assed effort into re-releasing games that are barely 1 year old.

GTA V

Naughty Dog has clearly put a lot of effort into remastering The Last of Us for the new architecture, but in the end, consumers don’t really care and just assume it was easy to just port a game. Regardless, I feel that successful franchises should make use of the beefier hardware and port older games to acclimatize themselves to the new consoles’ architectures. It’d be a great learning tool and a better chance at making their following games better and faster.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if The Last of Us: Remastered and GTA V are big successes just like they were last year.

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TBT Swashbuckling, Fire Pro Coliseum Battling Budget Games

Do you remember at the end of the Ps2's life cycle, there were all these...affordable budget games for sale? When I say end of the life cycle, I'm talking circa 2007-2008, after the ps3 and the 360 were both released. Anyway, Sean and I got into this weird sort of phase where we both bought a $20 game every other week pretty much. Many of these games I don't even remember playing for more than a couple hours—if at all—but they were just fun to buy and try out despite it all.

One of the first budget games I remember picking up was Swashbucklers. I had been eye balling it for a few weeks because I love pirate games, and this game aspired to be like Sid Meier's Pirates—one of my all time favorites.

It had a very peculiar aesthetic; all the ships were part sail-part steam engine. You do battle; search for treasure; have street fights, etc. All sounds fun, but wrapped in a budget game, it just doesn't quite deliver. But who knows, I never did play it for very long.

Another game we bought—I'm quite certain this one was all Sean's Idea—was Fire Pro Wrestling. This game was pretty fun actually, even though we could barely ever figure out how to fight effectively. It was an isometric 2D wrestling game. Not quite the side view you had while playing a 2D wrestling game on, let's say, a Super Nintendo, but they tried something different...unfortunately it didn't work out too well. For $20 however, it has a lot of zany characters, is visually appealing, and fun despite some control issues.

Last up: NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, another fighting game (noticing a trend?). This one, too be honest, I don't even remember putting into my console. I was looking at the game case before and it actually looks half way decent. Maybe Sean and I will give it a try sometime.

There are so many budget games released in this "sweet spot" of a system's life cycle, which leaves me wondering when it will hit the Ps3/360.

In any case, what is your favorite—good or so horrible it's good—budget game?

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TBT Katamari Damacy

The first time I ever played Katamari Damacyis a pretty vivid memory; not only because Katamari is such a peculiar and bizarre game, but because we had a bunch of people over for my brother's birthday. I can't remember exactly why I had invited some of my friends over, since it was never really customary to have friends over during a family party. In any case, Katamari had released earlier that week, and one of my friends brought it over. Not knowing it at the time, a ludicrous addiction to this series will have been born.

You take on the role of the King of all Cosmos' son. The King is always very aloof, all his son (you) want is his approval. Being such a majestic man, nothing is ever good enough and no matter what you do, he will always put you down. Sounds very harsh yes, but it actually just adds to the experience and hilarity of the game.

The King

Katamari Damacy isn't a very hard game to describe as weird as it might sound. You're essentially rolling around a ball of garbage (referred to as a Katamari; which means mass or cluster in Japanese) and anything you roll over that is smaller then you get added to your mass. You start off small, picking up erasers on a desk for instance; eventually you'll get so large you'll encompass the whole building.

The Prince and his Katamari

It's charmingly simple, yet has spawned many incarnations after gaining popularity for its off the wall craziness. I own like 4 different versions of this game. Even though they're quite similar, I just couldn't get enough content.

Each one went far beyond what the previous ever did in terms of scale however. The first only ever had you getting as big as a continent. Fast forward and they have you rolling Katamaries the size of galaxies.

Everything about this game oozes personality, from the odd yet mesmerizing music, to the ever simplistic visual design.

Some of the music is quite jazzy; others have an electronic flair to them, always very fitting though. My all time favorite being this song:

I used to play the stage with this song on it all the time because it was the only way I could hear it. Nowadays, it's so simple to just go on Youtube and find a song (any song) from a game/tv show/commercial, heck you can probably even find that cool elevator music you heard that one time. Not then, my only way, roll that katamari... I love the music in this game.

If I had to pick a reason why I love this series so much, it would have to be because it's a game you can just play. No thinking, no worries, just play. In an age when people run around with too much on their plate, it's kind of nice to just sit down for a moment and play.

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TBT Ring of Red

When I think of rare games, my mind always seems to end up fixate on Japanese titles for some reason; and that's why for the most part, I don't think I will have that sort of collectable feeling towards many ps3 games outside of maybe games like Ni no Kuni. My first game to share on TBT will be Ring of Red. Released in Japan in September 2000 (March 2001 in NA), it was out pretty early into the life cycle of the ps2.

Ring of Red is an interesting strategy game because it has a pseudo action segment mixed in with the turn based strategy. It takes place in an alternate history in the 1960's, which sees Japan turned into a modern day Korean. After World War II, Japan didn't surrender, and the U.S. took over the south side, while Russia took over the North. Boarders were drawn, and you can see where the Korea reference comes in. Now the other part of the alternate history that comes into play is the best part, skirmishes involve giant walking tanks, which is pretty bad ass.

I remember playing this game a good 10 years ago when I found it lying around a game store used. As you will come to learn about me, I love my mech games (I am a huge Gundam fan), so the theme drew me in. Anyway, back then I had a bit of trouble with the game. It ain't easy, and having recently played it again, I can say I didn't approach the game properly the first time. Think about any RPG you've played...  Alright, now who is the strongest character in that game? It's the main character right!? Wrong. Ring of Red is actually quite balanced when it comes to the mechs. There are 4 difference types: short range light-armoured recons, mid-range balanced types, long-range slow guys, and melee units. They all work in a rock-paper-scissors sort of deal, but none of this is really explained to you… but I suppose it's kind of obvious.

So as I've said, I recently replayed it, and I can say it isn't as hard as I remember it being; but man, most missions are long. Once you obtain all your units (which is a total of 8, 2 of each type) you are constantly outnumbered as you are in most turn-based  games, but I don't remember any other game sending so many reinforcements at you. It felt like they sent them every single mission. Missions take anywhere between an hour near the beginning of the game to about 2-3 hours near the end, and this is in large part due to the pseudo action combat.

Pseudo action combat.

The way the combat works is mainly for flair haha--it does look cool though! Each mech has its own ideal range, and in combat you are on a dueling plain where you can move forwards or backwards. Pretty simple: you want to stay inside your optimum range, while avoiding your enemies. Your best bet is to do match ups (long range vs. melee for instance). You sort of move back and forth on the plain until your cannon is loaded, then you go into this sweet looking aimer view, and wait for your hit percentage to go up and then shoot. While the developers went through the trouble of making combat look cool, that is in fact all it is since if you clearly hit X while the reticule is off the enemy mech, you can still hit it because it's only using the percentage... Bummer I know (hence why I’ve coined combat as being “pseudo” action-like). Battles are suppose to be about 90 seconds, but they can last a while longer once everyone starts using special abilities, and when there are like 20-30 enemies you have to fight, it can take a while to complete a mission. At least you're able to save and quit mid mission.

In the end, this game will always be a classic. The setting is interesting, the walking tanks are pretty original and there is just so much they put into the game, I didn't even talk about the soldiers you get to bring with you, adding a layer of customizability to your individual mech strategy. If you're a fan of turn based strategy, I would highly recommend picking it up. It was actually made available on the PSN in 2011 ($9.99 in NA). If you have a ps3, go play it!

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