The last two weeks I've found myself very focused on the Devil May Cry series. Previously, I had only been familiar with DMC3. I found it to be an above average action game, but not quite what everyone hyped it up to be. My main gripes were how the bosses felt more like endurance tests rather than strategic matches, only being allowed to use 1 of the 4 styles at a time, and an overall displeasure regarding the combo system not being obvious enough to really master. Maybe the game just wasn't geared to newbies like me? Maybe that's where the first game comes in?
So on a whim, I decided to give the original a fair shot. I knew practically nothing about it, besides what I saw from the introduction cutscene off youtube a few years back. I was truly going in blind, not knowing what to expect, but very eager to understand how this game spawned a series that sold 9 million copies.
Presentation: The menus feel pretty basic and dull, but they do offer up some decent art in the backgrounds. Selecting your equipment will play short FMV sequences demonstrating its function. Very basic, but it gets the job done.
Right off the bat, I was treated to some truly awful acting and writing. You expect this from Capcom, who's notorious for such service, but the problem here is the game seems to take itself a little too seriously. I may have DMC3 on the brain, a game which is often ridiculous if only to directly entertain the player, but DMC1 neither reaches that sweet spot, nor is it so campy and half-assed that you get a chuckle out of it (ie: Resident Evil). You'll listen to these characters, and you'll honestly think that Capcom was trying to cater to 13 year old, blood thirsty brats. Almost every time a character speaks, you'll put your palm to your forehead.
The story didn't really have a whole lot to it, as far as I understand. Dante is the son of Sparda, who was a Legendary Dark Knight, and apparently fought against demons for the human's side. Some shit happened, he got sealed away in another dimension, Dante's mom was killed, this new girl Trish is some genetic/mystic clone of his mother made by Mundus who I guess has some beef with your dad. Honestly, that's enough. The story was fucking awful. I just don't care. Even if you're a die hard fan, you must admit that by the time you finish the game, when that antique prop plane crashes through multiple stone floors in the castle and then Dante pulls a Fonzie on that bitch so he and his chick can flaw away into a happy ending....you have to admit they didn't even try to form a coherent story.
The game is structured into 20-something missions. Some missions can last a while, offering puzzles, large maps, boss fights, and so on. Others may literally just be a 60 second romp. These stages came across in a spastic fashion, but at least they were surprising somewhat.
Graphics: You know what? I was impressed. For a 7 year old game, it looks damn fine. The environments are top notch, and the camera work only strengthens the visuals. Characters move perhaps a little stiffly and maybe they could have had a little more detail, but I'm not complaining. For an early PS2 title, this must have been quite a showstopper.
Sound: I felt compelled to crank the speakers up during every gaming session. That should say something. Every gunshot, sword clash, enemy cackle, all of it was top notch. I almost wish I had a sound effect bank rip from this game. So many memorable noises.
And of course the soundtrack, perhaps the most defining characteristic of the series. A perfect blend of dark, creepy ambiance with a great, unique style of synthesized metal. You absolutely must hear the themes for the Griffon and Neo Angelo (see bottom). While DMC3 opted for a grungier death metal vibe, with vocal sniplets strewn about battle music, the original here kept it entirely instrumental all the way through. I do enjoy both albums, but I think DMC1's was much more suitable for the game. I think a wider audience will accept it, and it will not distract you from the experience.
Gameplay: Now you must understand that DMC1 practically invented the whole "Stylish, Over-the-Top" action genre. It has been copied very much in the last 7 years. This unfortunately will make the game feel a little too simple to some of us, especially for the first few missions. Once you get Alastor, and a few moves for it, this is where the combat becomes worthwhile. Honestly, I came very close to never playing the game again just because the first 3 missions or so boiled down to dodging and slicing enemies endlessly. Trust me, it gets better.
I know I'm doing a lot of comparing to DMC3 here, if only to help convince other people that part 3 is not necessary better in every way. To start with, the devil trigger is MUCH more useful and maybe even required for some of these battles. It's seriously invaluable. Yes, the air lightning move is a bit cheap, but that's ok. It's fairly weak on bosses anyway. The most important benefit is the lessening of your damage and staggering. Enemies will often rush or surround you, and you'll need the transformation to push on through.
I found myself reminded of Prince of Persia: Sands of Time when it comes to combat. Both games had fairly innovative, but limited combat systems at the time, and had sequels which added leagues of depth, but there's this certain balance that these first games maintain with the combat. Each move seems to serve a real purpose. You'll find yourself using your entire skillset, whereas in DMC3 and the later PoPs, (and be honest here), you'd beat half a game with just one or two moves, didn't you? That forward + swing move with the nunchucks would obliterate almost anything in DMC3. Very unbalanced, I think. DMC1 had me trying a lot of strategies on new enemies. I like that.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and just assume that the main things people noticed in 2001 were the lock-on combat system (coupled with the cinematic camera), the air juggling (especially via Ebony & Ivory), and the effortless swapping between shooting and melee. Those three things sum up why this game was so heavily credited in the action genre. I'm not taking it down a notch. I respect what it did. I just don't think it offered quite the evolutionary leaps that some people claim. Still, it works and it's fun. Good for them.
Overall: Guys, it's like $5 and available at virtually any used game store. If you haven't played it, just go buy it. I had a good time, and I now understand its success. Capcom is my favorite video game developer for a reason; they stay consistent. For the last 20 years or so they continue to pay mind to all the aspects of gaming instead of just one or two. They also continue to put out titles that age quite well. It feels good to explore something you missed out on many moons ago.
PS: What was with all these characters around 2000, dressed in red coats, and armed with a big white gun and a big black gun? Vash the Stampede, Alucard, and Dante?
As a bonus, here's some of the best music tracks in trailer form:
Is anyone else getting sick and tired of this argument yet? When are devs and publishers going to realize that pirated copies and downloads DO NOT EQUAL lost sales? Sorry, they don't. The vast, VAST majority of people who pirate games have no intention of buying the games in the first place. I pirated Puzzle Quest. And for the first 5 hours, I felt guilty because it seemed like a great game. Then it got very old, very quickly and I didn't play it anymore. I would have been annoyed if I paid for that. As I've said before, there have been times when I pirated surprisingly amazing games, and then rushed out and bought them. If it weren't for piracy, those developers would have never gotten my gaming dollar. I've done this about a dozen times. That's a dozen games I would have otherwise never purchased.
I mean, listen. There may have been a day where piracy was an actual issue (I can only refer to America here), but the fact is, the gaming audience has grown older, gotten jobs, and can easily afford video games. We're no longer at that stage when all the pirates are just 13 year old's who are leeching the latest warez via IRC Fserves so they can avoid begging their mommies to buy the game for them.
I'm also tired of the PC being specifically targeted as such an easily pirate-able medium. Who started this? These people clearly haven't played a PC game in the last 15 years. We no longer are asked to simply recite lines from the manual texts. Let's see the average PC user pirate a modern game. Try to explain what disc images, image mounters, virtual drives, drive maskers, sub-channel data and the like are. I dare you. The average PC user can't find the fucking MP3s I send them because they don't know what a "My Documents" is.
Console piracy on the other hand generally involves nothing more than installing the mod or exploit in the console for the average joe, and showing him what the "Copy Disc" button looks like in Nero. That's all there is to it. From that point on, he's got the hang of it. I'm not trying to promote console piracy, but honestly guys, it's not hard, and its not some super secret cult-like society. They're called soldering irons, and a lot of fucktards wield them.
I'm just angry because I also recently saw Capcom blame piracy for bad sales of the PC version of DMC4 as well. Ya know what might have helped sales, Capcom? If your legal demo actually booted on my machine. Instead it gives some complicated Direct X error and dies. Capcom didn't care, and ignored the issue many of us had, and guess what? A piracy group fixed their game for them. Lo and behold, after installing the cracked exe, TADAH! It runs. Hilarious. So no, you lost my sale. Tough luck. The pirated copy works better for me. read more
I decided to revisit RE4 on PC and see how far the fan-base has been able to enhance the visuals. For those who don't know, the PC version was a port of the PS2 version, which was extremely flawed compared to the Gamecube version. Namely, polygon counts and textures were cut in half, and a lot of the environments were trimmed down in subtle ways, and various other effects were either removed or downgraded. Also, all the cutscenes were pre-rendered, instead of realtime like Gamecube offered, which meant they had compression artifacts and your unlocked costumes were never shown.
Well here are the essential mods I've found that improve the visuals without making drastic changes.
Resident Evil 4 Texture Patch v2.0, by Albert
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=1631 This mod made massive progress so quickly, because of the simplicity behind it. Basically, Albert found out how to cut and paste the textures from the Gamecube version to the PC version with much ease. A job that Capcom should have been able to do originally. You'll notice just about every texture in the game looks twice as good, just like you remembered it on Gamecube. It's fantastic. Albert later went through and further improved some textures that still stood out. This is a very self-contained, and perfectly compatible mod, and should be the most important one to grab.
Enhanced Environment 2.0, RE4 texture improvement, by Cerberus
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=2172 This is a much less vital texture mod. A lot of people swear by it, but when I installed it on it's own, I noticed that it didn't improve quite a few textures that Albert's does, despite being much larger in size and claiming to contain Albert's textures. It's recommended to install this on top of Albert's, as it does do a pretty good job on the environments, as was the initial goal. You can live without this one however, should you need the storage space.
Hi-res Eff/tpl Textures Replacement Pack 1.0, by Albert
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=2743 The most important feature of this mod is that it re-skins the menus and fonts of the game, as well as adds custom button icons to match your controller. It does a flawless job of fixing up all the low-resolution console GUI objects. There's just one big catch to this mod. It requires that you run the game through a loader exe every single time, and it adds about a 15 second boot time. Kind of a pain in the ass, but if you tend to play games for long stretches of time, you won't mind. I don't though.
Re4 Ps 2.0 Bloom Mod, real bloom, by cdiddy7
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=2236 This mod tries to enhance the lighting to resemble the lighting engine seen on Gamecube. The original UK and Asian releases of RE4PC actually had no lighting engine at all, but a later patch, and NA release, incorporated a simple lighting engine. This mod tries to take things a step further, but you may find that it goes a little too far on the bloom. Also, the menus will be affected by it and bloom as well, even the white font on black backgrounds. Basically, it makes the in-game graphics look better overall, but makes the rest of the game look a little out of place.
Improved Cut Scenes V2.0, by Sp00kyFox
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=2563 On top of being stuck with pre-rendered cutscenes, Capcom did an absolutely terrible job of recording them. They all had awful compression artifacts because they were using low bitrate MPEG2. They also used a crap deinterlacer. Well, Sp00kyfox fed the clips through some AviSynth filters and did a great job of restoring them as best as anyone could, and then he encoded them through the best codec current available (arguably), x264. This requires FFDShow or else the clips won't play in game, but if you are of the many who just use K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, you're already good to go. The cutscenes will still look low resolution compared to your high resolution graphics, but until someone figures out how to mod in the realtime cutscenes from Gamecube (there was some progress on this a while back) this is your best bet.
Laser Tweaker, Change transparency and color, by St.Vampyre
http://z6.invisionfree.com/Resident_Evil_4_PC/index.php?showtopic=234 By default, the laser sight on your weapons is entirely too bright and thick. This little mod lets you turn down the opacity and shrink the laser dot. Simple, but important.
Watch it and form your own opinion. Maybe I'm not a big enough fanboy of either Final Fantasy or Dead or Alive (or Nina from Tekken). This video just seems extremely cheesy, pointless, and shameless. In concept, it's just like Kings of Power 4 Billion%(click your address bar and hit enter to fix video), which I ironically love. Both videos are about over-the-top violence for the sake of nothing else but being violent.
I guess the difference is that KoP was a completely original piece, with hand-crafted sprites, and brutal music that is carefully synced with the action. Dead Fantasy II however takes copywrited characters, gives them all very dull looking models, rips sound effects right out of KOF99 (or 2002, I cant be bothered), and animates them in ways that just don't suit the visual style. Somehow it all just seems incredibly stupid. It only gets dumber when you realize that the characters aren't even fighting in their signature ways most of the time, and instead are just shooting your standard hadokens and shit.
Why am I even posting about it then? Well I had no intention to until I realized that all the praise isn't just coming from horny 13 year old boys with no taste in anything. No, I've seen countless people in their 20's and 30's across many blogs, calling this the greatest fan-made CGI film ever.
The sad thing is, they may be right, at least in the gaming world. Very rarely do we ever see anything technically and artistically impressive come from game-inspired video fan-works. You want to see something truly impressive? Watch this. It's a fan-made video from a few years back, based on the Motorball saga in one of my favorite comics of all time, GUNNM (Battle Angel Alita). It has superb graphics, editing, animation, and it handles the source material with every ounce of care. It's the best example we have of what James Cameron's version will look like, if he ever gets around to working on it.
All I'm saying is that just because a product reigns over a mountain of shit, doesn't mean you need to show it a Zeus-level of respect.
Or maybe everyone is just seeing something I'm not. Whatever. read more
I had some time today to whip these up. For those who don't know, this is the newest Japanese release in the Sega Ages line of PS2 ports. They often enhance the old games in various ways, and this one is no different.
All videos were ripped from the bonus CDs included with the games on PS1. I know these are ancient, but again, I couldn't find them on YouTube, so I'm just filling a void. read more
This is something I never hear anyone talking about. More common during the retro age than now, game manuals often have a section towards the end aptly titled "Notes" or sometimes a more clever title.
In the old days, there were basically three valid uses for these pages:
1) Cheat codes. If you were big on cheating, whether for assistance or to extend your interest in the game, there was no better place to jot those button combinations down. You almost felt like you were completing the manual itself, filling in the blanks.
2) Passwords. Passwords stunk, plain and simple. Even when I was first introduced to them, the thought of progress being held was meager compared to my frustration of this damned system. Hastily, I would scribble down the numbers and letters so as to get right back into the game. Later, when I wanted to resume, I often struggled at guessing which case a letter was, whether O was the number or letter, whether that is an intentional space or just poor spacing in my own writing. God damn you to Hell, Metroid.
3) Strategies. Primarily Megaman boss weaknesses. Star Crash beats Gravity Man. Hard Knuckles beats Top Man. Ring Boomerang beats Dust Man. This shit be important, yo.
Now I still see some Notes sections in modern games. They seem more common in Nintendo games, than any others. Despite the complexity of today's games, I don't really see the use of a Notes page. What would you write in there? Cheat codes aren't as prevalent as they once were. Password systems are a thing of the past. Strategies usually consist of "Shoot until it dies". What else is there? Maybe you could write down some plot predictions. Well, that'd work if Nintendo games had surprising plots. read more
So I was glossing over the Steam holiday sales, and I was noticing that a lot of people were pointing out the $52 price point on the id Super Pack. You get 22 games, which is practically id's entire catalog aside from their extremely new titles. I've enjoyed the Dooms and Quakes and all that, and Steam has treated me very well over the years. I've never had any major issues with the games I've digitally purchased, and the convenience of downloading a game within minutes that will install itself and comes with the final patch pre-applied is unmatched. So what's wrong with this particular deal? A lot.
I'll start with one issue that a lot of you may not see as an issue. DosBox. You see, Doom 1, Hexen 1, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Commander Keen, along with any respective expansions, are all sloppily being emulated by DosBox. Steam tries to make the process of running game as simple as possible, but in doing so, you are drastically limited in terms of configuration for these old games. I can probably manually configure DosBox with some edits of text files, but I really don't want to study into that.
Now maybe I've been spoiled by the fantastic source ports out there, like DoomsDay which runs Doom and Hexen with tons of enhancements to video, audio, and controls. I can understand how the purists will applaud the DosBox route they've taken here, but the thing is, DosBox doesn't provide an authentic experience, especially in terms of sound. I just think it would have been fantastic if they could have tried to modernize these games a little bit, like giving us jumping and mouse aiming (where it doesn't make you run when you push and pull the mouse).
Moving on, we have some real technical issues. Quake 1 by itself runs just fine, but Quake 1's expansions do not. When I run the games, I get a rainbow colored scramble of graphics. I can just barely make out the menu texts so I can close the app and safely make it back to my desktop. I see no mention of this issue on the forum.
Quake 3 runs just fine, and PunkBuster seems to detect it and work with it. However the game seems to randomly erase the CDKey that steam assigned to me, which requires a restart. Even worse is that Quake 3 Team Arena NEVER acquires a key, and NEVER works with PunkBuster, so I have yet to play online successfully. My native copy of the game works online just fine, so this must be a Steam issue. These issues are common according the forum, and members have been begging for a fix since launch. Neither Steam, nor id seem to care.
Another annoying issue with Quake 3 + Expansion is that the Steam Community Popups seem to scramble the graphics. Whenever I get an alert, the game's polygons and textures freak out and it requires a restart. I have to remember to disable the popups before playing. This is very annoying, and you would think Steam especially would have fixed this by now.
Hexen 2 is a game I've wanted to play for quite some time. Unfortunately it does not start at all. No idea why. Thats that, I guess.
Overall I am disappointed with this pack. It feels like a sloppy effort to make quick cash, and I don't know if I should blame id or Steam. It's not all bad though. I have no issues with Doom 3 + Expansion, nor any with Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Unfortunately Doom 3 has virtually no presence online, with a max of like 7 active players online at any given time, and that includes its mods. And RtCW's multiplayer mode is actually a legally free game that you can download and play elsewhere, so there's not much value in having it on Steam.
I suppose if theres one real positive thing to say it's that you are getting access to all the WAD and PK3 files for the old games, and I assume they're pre-patched to the final versions. That's very handy if you intend on using them in modern engines. At least you can relax in knowing you're 100% legal in that regard.
Was it worth it to me? No. Will it be worth it to the true id fan? No, because they probably have all these games already. What if they don't? Eh, then maybe it is, but I'd still recommend they just hunt down the old discs or fall back on piracy. At least they won't have Steam aggressively holding their hands through all of it. read more
My PS2 memory card is full. I don't want to delete anything on it to make room for the new saves so I go out and buy another official Sony brand card. I come home, stick it in slot 2, insert the new game ready for it to create the save file on the new card and...what's this? Yes, I know memory card #1 is full! Use card 2! What the fuck? No, I don't want to continue without saving!
So I calmed down, assuming that maybe Jak 2's developer, Naughty Dog, maybe had an oversight of some sort. I try another game, and another, and another. It seems all these games are completely un-fucking-able to interact with memory card 2! Why does the second slot even exist then? To copy saves over to a friend's card from the BIOS menu I guess. I can't think of much else. Why have I never even heard anyone griping about this shit before? We didn't have this problem on PS1. All the games I can remember offered a memory card selection screen.
I don't know how to end this rant, so bye. read more
So I'm at Wal-Mart. I'm only really here for cheap work shoes, but I feel the need to buy something else. I haven't spoiled myself in a while. I contemplate diving into a new platform altogether. PSP, DS, 360, Wii. None of them seem ripe enough yet. I pass.
So I look at the PC games. Crysis, Call of Duty 4, etc. None of them interest me. But World of Warcraft: BattleChest for $40? Hmm, comes with both DVDs, both manuals, 2 guest passes, a free month, and both BradyGames guides? That sounds like a bundle. I buy.
Now I'm not entirely fresh to this genre. I've tried nearly all of the highest rated "free" MMORPGs. I hated nearly all of them, but I did play Rappelz for a solid month. I've tried out WoW a year prior, as well. Again, didn't get into it. But it's been patched many times. It's community matured (I assumed). I know I'm getting into this 3 years too late, but when Mr. T and Shatner promote a game, it must be at it's peak. Or long past it's peak, depending on how you look at it.
So I install. Now with a high end DVD-RW drive and cable broadband, it took no less than 2 fucking hours to fully install and patch this bastard. That was ridiculous. At long last, I log-on, make an Undead Warlock, and trek on.
By about, oh, the 30th quest or 478th monster slain, whichever, I feel like I've already had my fill of this turd. For some reason, I assumed that if it's a game that requires a purchase AND a monthly fee, it must surely be more fun than a game that is completely free. Well, so far, that's just not the case. WoW lasted me 1 day. Rappelz lasted me 1 month.
Some of the core gripes:
1) The quests are boring and repetitive. Every single quest involves killing an enemy type, fetching an item, or speaking to someone. That's it. Nothing else. There's only so many little stories you can weave around these activities before it becomes far-fetched. Like...0 stories.
2) 9 million fucking subscribers, and yet I don't see anyone. In any given town, there are no more than 1 or 2 players (with the blue names). So...what gives? I went with the realm that it recommended me.
3) Related to the above gripe, I got invited to a guild as soon as I began, by some 19 year old who was clearly just spamming invites to amass a large guild full of strangers. I didn't even SEE this person in the game, nor have I seen any guild-mates as of yet. In this guild, no one does anything but chat about subjects I'd rather not know. One of the aliases belonged to a mother and son, who alternated on this game. This mother actually named her son Luke, after Star Wars, and gloated about how decked out her son's room was in Stars and Wars. I'm officially disturbed at this point, and starting to miss the little punks on Counter Strike calling me a cock-fag, because at least I can shoot them.
4) Everyone plays solo. As far as I can tell anyway. I don't see the point of a monthly fee when you don't play with anyone else online. If you want a single player adventure, buy a Final Fucking Fantasy. At least it has movies for you to watch to go with the grind. Grinding solo in WoW serves absolutely no purpose. There's just no reward. Can't these kids just go jackoff or something? At least they'll get something out of it.
5) Advertisement spam. It's a fucking epidemic, apparently. Every single time I log in, and multiple times an hour, douche-fists are PMing me messages like "$20 for undetectable hacks or your money back!". Well it's nice to know I just joined a community that's potentially full of hackers. That really motivates me to work hard on my character.
Anyways, since I'm so late to this party, I'm sure I'm stating nothing here that hasn't been said thousands of times before.
Do any of you play this shit? Do you enjoy it? If you do, can you teach me how to? The balloon tips sure aren't doing a very good job. I'll sit, be quiet, and absorb. Just take me under your wing and show me how to have fun in it. That's all I want. read more
I am Steve.
I live in Kansas.
I play games, but I'm usually a generation behind.
I fix computers.
I run SteveMV.com.
I provide content for, and moderate, Racketboy.com.
