The Official Playstation Thread

[chilistudios]

I need help remembering the name of a Japan-exclusive PS1 game. It was this third person action game with a gritty, grey-heavy anime aesthetic. I remember thinking the graphics were on-par with PS2 games when I first saw it. I remember the player character being this guy with black hair. He wasn't in a mech. If my memory's right, it was released late in the PS1's lifespan.

Edited July 12 by chilistudios

[CapitanClassic]

@chilistudios, if you were familiar with Robotech in the USA, you might be thinking of Macross VF-X 2

 

 

 

[chilistudios]

4 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

@chilistudios, if you were familiar with Robotech in the USA, you might be thinking of Macross VF-X 2

 

 

 

I'm very sorry to say that this is not the game I'm thinking of. Neat-looking game, though.

[roots.genoa]

6 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

if you were familiar with Robotech in the USA, you might be thinking of Macross VF-X 2

But he said

12 hours ago, chilistudios said:

I remember the player character being this guy with black hair. He wasn't in a mech.

🤷‍♂️

But frankly it's hard to guess without more details (character's clothes, gameplay mechanics, are you using a gun or melee weapons? etc.).

[chilistudios]

14 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

But he said

🤷‍♂️

But frankly it's hard to guess without more details (character's clothes, gameplay mechanics, are you using a gun or melee weapons? etc.).

I think shooting was involved in the game I'm thinking of. It had a sci-fi aesthetic.

[newtmonkey]

I've been reading through a bunch of old video game mags from '96/'97 (some of my thoughts posted on AA here), and this put me in the mood to play some of the earlier PSX games.  There's really something fascinating about the first year or two of the PSX, Saturn, and N64.  There was such a wide variety of titles being released, and it blows my mind that the PSX got early ports of complex PC games like X-COM: UFO Defense and Panzer General (!!).  

 

Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain

This was one of the first games I got for my PSX back in the day, though I never got very far into it.  I remember finding it to be pretty difficult and somewhat clunky, and the world seemed absolutely massive.

With that in mind, I decided that I'd finally like to complete this one.  At around five hours in at this point, it's really not difficult at all (so far), and it didn't take long to get used to how it plays.  The world appears massive, but so far the game is extremely linear and it doesn't take very long to explore quite a decent portion of the map.

The game excels in atmosphere and mood, which are both helped a lot by the voice acting (especially for Kain), the excellent soundtrack, and the creepy sound effects.  I did get a kick out of the intro text, as I recall thinking back then that it was profound and mature, but in reality it's taken word-for-word from Aleister Crowley's Magick, Liber ABA, Book 4.

So far, so good!

 

Loaded

I never had this one back in the day, though I remember everyone talking about it, and the mags seemed to enjoy it.  It's nothing too amazing, but it's got a decent engine that runs at a pretty smooth framerate with plenty of colored lighting, and it has that edgy mid-90s 'tude that I find increasingly endearing.  I went in guns blazing and was killed in the third room, so there's definitely some strategy here.  I'll keep at this one.

 

Project Overkill

This is somewhat similar to Loaded, actually, but the pace is much slower.  It's not as technically impressive, but you could also argue that the graphics have actually aged a bit better.  Here's another game where I got crushed in the third room, so there's got to be something I'm missing about this one.  I should probably read the manual.

 

The Divide: Enemies Within

It turns out that this is a bit of a Metroid clone, but taking place in a completely polygonal world (though from a top-down perspective).  It's very atmospheric and seems intriguing, but suffers from a really poor framerate and extremely frustrating aiming.  You have "aim down" and "aim up" buttons, but only have three shooting angles (the floor, straight, the sky) while flying enemies have what seems to be complete range of motion.  You basically just have to aim up and run around holding the strafe button until your shots line up.  The level design is also somewhat dull early on, which makes it difficult to stay motivated.  Still, this might be a fun one once I've spent some time with it.

 

The Adventures of Lomax

This is a gorgeous 2D platformer taking place in the Lemmings world.  It looks and sounds great, but I find the attack mechanic, where you have to press the jump button while jumping in order to spin attack, to be very inaccurate and frustrating.  I checked out some screenshots from later in the game, and it doesn't seem like the game has much variety in the backgrounds, which is disappointing.

[newtmonkey]

Star Ocean: The Second Story

I was totally addicted to this game back when it was first released. I found the skill system fascinating, and would play this thing for hours just grinding up skill points and experimenting with all the weird crafting systems.  I made it pretty far into the game, but never completed it.  Now, 25 years later, having completed Star Ocean on the Super Famicom and hating it, it's time to revisit SO:TSS and see if it's actually any good.

 

SO:TSS starts out quite good indeed.  The graphics are an attractive mix of excellent pre-rendered backgrounds and 2D sprites.  Interestingly, the developers implemented some kind of software-based filtering on the sprites, as they soften slightly when closer to the "camera" so that they don't get too pixelated.  The soundtrack is also excellent, although there's way too much reverb on some of the songs.

 

The game mostly carries over everything from the first game, but just improves all of it by a billion percent.

 

In TSS the world no longer consists of linear pathways from town to town, but is instead a massive world to trek across from location to location.  You can easily unlock an ability that lets you set the random encounter frequency, which is a very cool touch.

 

The battle system is a major improvement over the broken mess that was combat in SO, where merely moving your characters around required you to move a mouse cursor with your controller, and where you could win 99% of battles including boss fights by just hitting the attack button over and over.  SO:TSS allows you to move around the battlefield directly with the dpad like any other sensible game and you actually need to pay attention to what you're doing in some fights, as there's a timing element involved since attacks can be interrupted.

 

It also carries over Private Actions from the first game, which are optional events you can seek out in each town.  These didn't really add much to the experience of playing SO, but are definitely worth checking out in TSS; the game even has some optional party members hidden behind these.

 

Finally, unlike the boring nonentities that made up your party in the first game, the party members you find throughout the game are all unique and fun.  This extends even to combat, where each character has his or her own unique skills/spells and methods of attacking.

 

The only complaint I have so far is that the game is unbelievable wordy but also not written very well.  There are also infuriating pauses in between every text box, and even worse, many sentences end with an ellipsis and the game has to annoyingly draw each dot.  You could play a drinking game where you take a shot each time this happens, but you would surely die within an hour of playing the game.

[SiberianSpForces]

Last week I was going to take my 'ol PS to the weekly FGC meeting with the fighters I have. Doing some game tests, it would either load a game or get hung up on the black PS logo screen. Snagged an untested PS One and did a laser swap. Seems to be fixed as the games that didn't load all the way do so now. *Whew* now to find that spring so I can play imports... 😋

[Austin]

No spring.. flash a memory card (or an Action Replay/Game Shark/Goldfinger/whatever) and be done with it. No more disc swapping! It's super easy to do. It'll even patch Euro games and let them be played on a North American console.

 

https://unirom.github.io/

 

 

Edited August 29 by Austin

[SiberianSpForces]

5 hours ago, Austin said:

No spring.. flash a memory card (or an Action Replay/Game Shark/Goldfinger/whatever) and be done with it. No more disc swapping! It's super easy to do. It'll even patch Euro games and let them be played on a North American console.

 

https://unirom.github.io/

 

 

Very neat! Got a spare memory card and a Gameshark too. Thanks for the link.

[dudeguy]

I've been playing Medievil. the last level I played was the one with scarecrows in it. I missed the chalice. There was a part with some sort of corn machinery and I didn't see the cog for it. I'll have to go back tonight and look for it 

[Lostdragon]

4 hours ago, dudeguy said:

I've been playing Medievil. the last level I played was the one with scarecrows in it. I missed the chalice. There was a part with some sort of corn machinery and I didn't see the cog for it. I'll have to go back tonight and look for it 

Loved this one at the time, the music was superb. 

 

Hard to believe it was originally intended as a Sega Saturn title. 

 

Picked up the remake on PS4 before i quit gaming. 

[dudeguy]

4 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Loved this one at the time, the music was superb. 

 

Hard to believe it was originally intended as a Sega Saturn title. 

 

Picked up the remake on PS4 before i quit gaming. 

I have no interest in the remake. Partly because I have a lot of good memories with the original. It's one of the few games my mom could play and enjoyed. She used Game Shark to help get through the levels. My brother loved the game as well. The PS1 had a lot of great adventure type games with oddball characters like Daniel Fortesque and I think being such an endearing character, he really helped cement the series as one of the best on the PS1

[Razzie.P]

5 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Loved this one at the time, the music was superb. 

 

Hard to believe it was originally intended as a Sega Saturn title. 

 

Picked up the remake on PS4 before i quit gaming. 

 

29 minutes ago, dudeguy said:

I have no interest in the remake. Partly because I have a lot of good memories with the original. It's one of the few games my mom could play and enjoyed. She used Game Shark to help get through the levels. My brother loved the game as well. The PS1 had a lot of great adventure type games with oddball characters like Daniel Fortesque and I think being such an endearing character, he really helped cement the series as one of the best on the PS1

I liked the original one alright, but absolutely loved the remake!