Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PS2)

Developer:

Ubisoft Montreal

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

PS2, GameCube, Xbox, Win (HD on PS3)

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This week on Super Adventures I'm playing the fourth of the legendary Prince of Persia games, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time! Okay technically it's the fifth of the games, but no one ever talks about Prince of Persia: Harem Adventures and I'm sure there's probably a reason for that.

Sands of Time is the second 3D Prince of Persia and the first of the Ubisoft trilogy, which lasted for four games in the end (after being interrupted by a temporary reboot part-way through). Ubisoft still owns the franchise to this day, but we haven't gotten a new Prince of Persia out of them since 2010. They got a bit distracted after a planned sequel called Prince of Persia: Assassin became too powerful, took on the name Assassin's Creed, and launched its own series.

By the way, my gimmick on Super Adventures this year is that I'm only playing games which have appeared on someone's 'top 10'. Well it took some serious research, but I finally found Sands of Time at #8 on stuff.tv's 10 faithful video game to movie adaptations list! I have the feeling it's probably on a few other top 10 lists too, seeing as it's got 92 on Metacritic. It's in the top 2% of PlayStation 2 titles!

Alright, this isn't my first time playing the game but it might as well be. I tried it out for 20 minutes or so back when it was new and didn't really feel a need to keep going with it. This time around I'm going to try to stick with it a little longer so it has an actual chance to win me over... or give me a real reason to quit.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

Game Boy Advance

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing the 17th 2D Castlevania platformer, Aria of Sorrow!

My gimmick this year is that I'm playing games you can find in a top ten list, and this one can be found in Nintendo Power's 20th anniversary Best of the Best list (in the 'GBA' section). It actually made top three, with the other two games being Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid: Zero Mission. Hey I've played both of them already!

This was the last of three Castlevanias on the GBA, though the first to have a title beginning with 'A'. The series continued on the DS with a direct sequel called Dawn of Sorrow, which cleverly referenced both the 'D' and the 'S'. Sadly the adventures of Soma Cruz didn't get a second follow up on the 3DS, so we never got to see how they would've worked the number 3 into the title.

There'd been handheld Castlevania games for over a decade by this point, ever since Castlevania: The Adventure came out for the Game Boy in 1989, but whenever people talk about the classic 80s and 90s Castlevania titles they're generally talking about the console games. Something weird happened in 1999 though. Veteran game series were making the switch to polygons, with sequels like Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Metal Gear Solid presenting a good argument for 2D being hopelessly archaic, and Castlevania was no exception. The thing is, Castlevania 64 was bloody terrible (I've been told), especially compared to Symphony of the Night from two years earlier. So when the 2D GBA games started mimicking Symphony's style and carrying on the 'music term of X' naming tradition started by Rondo of Blood, they were ones that came across like the true successors to the Castlevania franchise instead of the 3D games.

Anyway I'm going to play the first hour or so and write too many words about what happened. Plus there'll be screenshots! So many screenshots.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance (PS2)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

2003 (Sons of Liberty 2001)

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Systems:

PS2, PS3, Vita, Xbox, Xbox 360, Windows

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March 4th, 2000, two decades ago, the second and most popular of the sixth-generation consoles was released in Japan. That means that today is the PlayStation 2's 20th birthday!

My first idea was that I could play one of its original launch titles to celebrate, but then I looked at what they were and decided that I could do better. So this week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty! Actually to be precise I'm playing the re-released Substance edition (PAL version) but really it's the same thing. They were just getting people to double dip for a handful of special missions. Well okay, lots of handfuls of special missions.

I actually beat this game once, many years ago, on PC. So I'll have a vague idea of what I'm doing but not what buttons to press to do it. Though one thing I definitely haven't forgotten, is how great the opening theme by Harry Gregson-Williams is. I think it sounds even better the original Metal Gear Solid theme by TAPPY, which sounds better than "The Winter Road" by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov. Unfortunately it also sounds kind of similar, and the other song was written back in the 70s, so Konami had to stop using their own MGS theme in the MGS games. This means they won't get to use it in the movie either!

Okay, I'm going to be playing the game up to a little bit into the Plant chapter, so there'll be SPOILERS for the first two hours or so. I might also mention at some point that the story becomes a bit of a confusing mess by the end and the game left a lot of questions that weren't answered for seven years.

Need for Speed Games Part 4: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Need for Speed: Underground

Today on Super Adventures, I've reached the end of the first decade of the Need for Speed games. We're in the EA GAMES TRAX era now, where every time a new song comes on, the TRAX box slides onto the screen to let you know who you're listening to. Even on the title screen.

This also means we're in the licenced soundtrack era, and the sixth gen console era! And Underground brings us to the era of perpetual twilight, where daytime is banned. Unless it's literally set underground, I don't think they ever say.

Anyway this is it, the last part. After this you won't be reading about any racing games here for a long long time, so enjoy it while it lasts (or endure it for just a little longer). Earlier parts are here, here and here.

(If I don't mention what system a screenshot came from, it's from the PC version.)

Metroid Prime (GameCube)

Developer:

Retro

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Release Date:

2003 (2002 NA)

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Systems:

GameCube, Wii

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I'm trying to figure out what the game's moody title music reminds me of. I think it might actually be Deus Ex, but I feel like it could turn into Perfect Dark at any moment. Not a bad place for a theme to be.

This week on Super Adventures I'm playing Metroid Prime, the sequel to the legendary Super Metroid! Well, kind of. It came out the exact same day as Metroid Fusion and I think that's considered to be the older twin (it even claims to be "METROID 4" when it starts up.) So I guess this is Metroid 5 then?

It's definitely not the fifth game in the timeline as they've slotted it in between Metroid and Metroid II for whatever reason. I didn't realise the Metroid games had enough of a story to require making interquels, but that's probably because I rarely finish the things. Plus it's been six years since I've played any of them and my memory's pretty fuzzy. Though at the time this was released fans had actually been suffering through an eight year gap between games, as the series skipped the N64 era entirely. The series also skipped the Wii U afterwards, fading away again despite the run of continuous Metroid Prime sequels and spin-offs.

Developer Retro Studios were responsible for the three main Metroid Prime games but after putting out the non-HD remake compilation Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii in 2009 they've been keeping themselves busy making Donkey Kong Country sequels instead. Though it was announced last month that they're taking over development on Metroid Prime 4! Is that a good thing? I wouldn't know, I haven't even played this first one yet.

Okay I'm going to play Metroid Prime for an amount of time somewhere between 'barely giving it a fair shot' and 'enough to bore the hell out of everyone reading', and take screenshots along the way. There will also be writing under these screenshots because... I don't know. Maybe I like writing about video games? No, that doesn't seem right.

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

This year on Super Adventures, things are still pretty dead and that's not changing any time soon. Sorry about that. But I do have a surprise guest post by my cat-obsessed associate game critic mecha-neko for you to enjoy!

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Hello! I'm mecha-neko and I'm back for another Obscure-As-All-Hell Animated Cat Game August!

Say hello to Inherit The Earth: Quest For The Orb, also known as Erben der Erde: Die Grosse Suche (Inherit The Earth: The Great Search) in German.

Developer:

The Dreamers Guild

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Release Date:

1994

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Systems:

DOS, Macintosh, Amiga, PC-98, Windows, Linux

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This is an adventure game that's been on the super Super Adventures adventure game wishlist for a long time, but it's only now that a copy has arrived in my paws. It's all about walking, talking animal-folk, so I'm certain I'll bump into a cat at some point.

I'm playing the original MS-DOS CD-ROM version as it makes producing these wonderful .gifs for you much easier, but the Steam version is identical, pixel-for-pixel, as far as I can tell.

Unreal II: The Awakening (PC)

Developer:

Legend Entertainment

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox

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Today on Super Adventures I thought I'd do something wild and play a video game for once. Unreal II: The Awakening to be specific, a first person shooter from the Xbox era, when PC games often came on multiple CDs stacked up on the same spindle to maximise the chances of one of them getting scratched. That's what my copy's like anyway, so I hope it still works.

Actually I'm not sure it ever really worked properly for me, as all I can remember about the game is that I stopped playing it early on when it crashed to desktop a couple of times. But I get the feeling I probably could've gotten further in it if I'd wanted to, and now that I'm writing about it I'll endeavour to be more persistent (whether I like the game or not).

The original Unreal was co-developed by Epic and Digital Extremes, but they were busy with the Unreal Tournament side of the franchise, so Unreal II: Unnecessary Subtitle was developed by the folks who made the Return to Na Pali expansion pack instead, Legend Entertainment. This was Legend's last ever game before being shut down by their owners, but they'd been around a while and were mostly known for making adventure games. So there's a non-zero chance that the writing might be better than the first person shooting here. I'm not getting my hopes too high for either though to be honest.

(Clicking the pictures will make them bigger, but not much bigger.)

Tales of Symphonia (PC)

Developer:

Namco Tales Studio

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Release Date:

2003 (Jp)

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Systems:

GameCube, PS2, PS3, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures I'm looking at this title screen wondering what 'Custom' does. Is that the 'Options' option maybe? Now I'm wondering if that other Tales game I played a while back did this as well; is it a Tales tradition, or are they rebelling against standard video game terminology for the sake of being weird?

I've only really played one of these games before, Tales of Destiny II on the PlayStation, so I went back and checked and it turns out that it has 'Customize' in place of 'options', so I see what they've done here. It also turns out that I played that six years ago now, so that explains why I've forgotten everything about how Tales games play. All I remember is that the trees looked very nice and by the look of this title screen that definitely is a Tales tradition.

Here's a fact that'll shock absolutely no one: Tales of Symphonia here is the 5th game in the long running Tales series, and yet it's the first to have been released in Europe! I'm surprised to learn that they've already reached game number 16 since then though. It's kind of hard to keep track of where they're up to as they don't usually put numbers on the games, and when they do you can't trust 'em. If you're curious, Tales of Destiny II is the 3rd game... and Tales of Destiny 2 is the 4th.

(Clicking pics will make them big.)

Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (GBA)

Developer:

Gameloft Srl

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

Game Boy Advance, N-Gage

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This week on Super Adventures I'm finally taking a look at a Splinter Cell game! Just not the one you want.

GBA Splinter Cell came out around five months after the Xbox original and I don't see a subtitle on it so I'm presuming it follows the same plot. But have they turned it into an isometric action game or a platformer? It's a mystery.

I don't dislike sneaking around in games but I do hate it when failing stealth leads to absolute disaster, so even though I've played a lot of the Splinter Cells I didn't play them very long. All I remember about them now is nice looking shadows and a man on the radio yelling at me for ruining everything. But I played them long enough to know that the generic funky spy music coming out of this GBA game right now isn't normal. Tom Clancy games are supposed to be about serious people on serious business! Not that I'm complaining, it's nice that it's cheered up a bit since its console days.

Alright I'll give it a couple of levels, sharing my thoughts as I go, and once I've played enough to satisfy my curiosity I'll finish off with a block of words that looks very similar to a review.

Freelancer (PC)

Developer:

Digital Anvil

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

PC

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This week on Super Adventures I'm having a go of PC Elite 'em up Freelancer. I've been meaning to write about this on my site for years but other games kept taking its place in the queue and it eventually got shoved to the back burner. But I played this game to completion back when it was new and I'm hyped to finally get around to jumping back into the Sirius Sector for some simulated space combat.

The game's by Digital Anvil, founded by Wing Commander developer Chris Roberts, who's probably better known these days as the man space sim fans keep throwing money at in the hopes he'll someday give them Star Citizen. Microsoft bought Digital Anvil in 2000, a few months after buying Bungie, but Freelancer escaped Halo's fate of becoming Xbox exclusive. Instead it remained PC exclusive, which still kind of sucks for console owners. If the Dreamcast could handle Starlancer, I bet the newer consoles could've managed the sequel.

Like Star Citizen, Freelancer promised a lot of ambitious features, like a dynamic galaxy with fluctuating stock prices, supporting thousands of players at once! And then the final game had a static galaxy supporting 128 players. It supports exactly 1 player these days, as the official servers were shut down 5 years after release, but I'm sure fans are still running galaxies of their own. It's all irrelevant to me though as I'm only going to be checking out the single player.

(Click the screenshots to gaze upon them in their full 1280x960 majesty).

Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy (PC)

Developer:

Raven

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Release Date:

2003

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Systems:

Windows, Xbox, Mac

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This week on Super Adventures I'm talking about Star Wars! I saw everyone else doing it and I felt left out. If you're reading this in five years time, then I'm talking about everyone going crazy over the release of 'The Force Awakens' last week. I know it's weird to think back to 2015, when people were enthusiastic about Star Wars movies again and the series hadn't been utterly driven into the ground by a succession of annual sequels, but that's where I'm at right now.

But I'm not talking about a film, I'd need some kind of Super Adventures in Sci-Fi website for that... no I'm talking about Star Wars™: Jedi Knight™ - Jedi Academy™! I'd make a joke about it being Star Wars: Dark Forces 4: Jedi Knight 3: Jedi Outcast 2 - Jedi Academy, but for once they've resisted sticking a number in there and making things more confusing than they have to be.

Jedi Academy is the last game in this prestigious sci-fi shooter series, but to be honest it's always felt more like a stand alone expansion pack to me, like Mysteries of the Sith was to Jedi Knight. Honestly I doubt I'll be able to say much about I didn't already say in my Jedi Outcast article a few months back, but it's Christmas so I thought I'd treat myself!

WARNING: CONTAINS NO SPOILERS FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2) - Part 2

This is the second part of my Disgaea article. If you're looking for the first part it's over here: Part one.

It feels wrong to leave all this space under the picture empty, so I'll throw in some I'll throw in some pointless Disgaea trivia for you as a bonus: the game's so small that in Europe and Japan it comes on a dark blue CD instead of the typical PS2 DVD. The US version on the other hand comes on a regular boring DVD and uses the extra space to include both the English and Japanese voices.

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (PS2) - Part 1

Developer:

Nippon Ichi

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Release Date:

2004 (EU)

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Systems:

PS2, PSP, DS

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Today on Super Adventures I’m taking a look at Nippon Ichi's infamous tactical RPG Disgaea: Hour of Darkness... and I've got no idea why they called it that. I mean I get the 'Disgaea' bit (dis + gaea = bad Earth, more or less), but Hour of Darkness? More like Month of Darkness looking at howlongtobeat.com, for a completionist run anyway.

The Disgaea games have gotten a reputation for being a bit... grindy, to the point where people have their favourite grinding stages and advanced grinding strategies to maximise their grind. I'd hope that's not the only way to play this though, so for the sake of science I WILL NOT BE REPLAYING STAGES FOR EXTRA XP. For the first couple bosses anyway, assuming I can even get that far.

I should admit up front that I'm not the biggest fan of tactical RPG type games, mostly because they usually beat me up and kick sand in my face. I've enjoyed games with turn-based tactical combat like XCOM and Wasteland 2, but I find tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics tend to be punishingly difficult. In fact I don’t even like the term 'tactical RPG', as the role-playing elements tend to be limited to 'your units' stats go up'.

On the other hand I should also admit that I've played Disgaea before and there's a good chance I'll remember how most of it works! So I might be a bit better informed than usual. Be prepared for words.

There'll be spoilers up to episode 2 I expect. I won't be ruining the ending(s) or anything. Except the fact that it has multiple endings, I just gave that away.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC) - Part 2

Click to jump back to part one.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (PC) - Part 1

And this year's final 'K' game is... Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic!

I've spent forever trying to capture screenshots from the Xbox version of this game, but the best I've managed has been fuzzy black and white footage from an old DVD recorder. But then one day a copy of the game miraculously appeared in my Steam library. I'm taking it as a sign that fate does want me to play this game, it just wants me to play the PC version instead.

I admit I have played through this before on the Xbox, about a decade ago perhaps, but thankfully my crappy memory means it'll likely be as if I'm seeing it all for the first time! I didn't even remember it has its own unique theme tune instead of reusing music from the films: youtube link.

Though here's one big difference I've noticed between the two versions: the PC version does not like my Xbox 360 pad one bit. Mouse and keyboard only, controllers not allowed.

(Click the pictures to view them at 1280x960 resolution. Except for the next one and the one after that.)

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (PC)

Today's 'F' game is... The Fall of Max Payne. Yeah sorry I totally cheated there (and I'd do it again without shame or hesitation). I'll be playing through Part One, mentioning anything that comes to mind as I go.

Max Payne 2 came out in 2003, two years after the original game, for PC, Xbox and PlayStation 2 (the GBA had to sit this one out I'm afraid). Critics and players loved the game but it didn't end up selling all that well and with Remedy Entertainment moving on to making Alan Wake the series lay dormant for almost a full decade after this before Rockstar Vancouver stepped in and gave it a big-budget blockbuster makeover with Max Payne 3. Whether it stayed true to the tone of the franchise is debatable, but critics and players agreed that it was a hell of a lot better than the mid-budget Max Payne movie released four years earlier.

But I'm meant to be talking about Max Payne 2 right now, so... uh... what about this theme tune huh? Pretty awesome and haunting right? Oh, here's a link so you can listen to it yourself while you read: youtube link. It's basically the song from the first game, except a bit slower, a bit sadder, and the piano has been replaced with violin.

(Click the pictures to inflate them to 1280x1024 resolution if you want a closer look at anything.)

Deus Ex: Invisible War (PC)

Today it is my great honour to present to you a selection of words and images chronicling my first experience with the game Deus Ex: Invisible War! Except it's not really my first experience as I finished the game years ago on the Xbox. I've got a terrible memory though so it'll be close enough.

I do remember that I didn't much like the game, at least not compared to the original, and I get the impression a lot of people share that feeling. Nice to see that the proper spinning 3D logo is back again though. It was replaced for the PS2 port of Deus Ex 1 with an inferior variation for no good reason I can think of, but all is well again.

(Click the gameplay screenshots to augment their resolution.)

BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles (PS2)

Today's B game is... BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles! AKA. Kensetsu Juuki Kenka Batoru: Buchigire Kongou!! Man I wish I could've made this title screen animated, it'd look so pretty with the cherry blossom blowing in the breeze.

This was one of the PlayStation 2's earliest games, out in Japan before the console had even launched in North America or Europe, though it took three whole years before it got an English release. Sadly the game never did make it over to the US, but it did make it over onto my shelf somehow; which is weird because I definitely didn't buy it. It just sort of appeared there one day out of nowhere. I'm hoping that if I play it for a bit and discover its dark secrets it might disappear again and become someone else's problem.

I do know that it was developed by Artdink, makers of A-Train, No One Can Stop Mr Domino, and a whole bunch of anime tie-in games. Though it's been published by Midas, which is kind of a big warning sign to me as... well it seems harsh to say that everything they touch turns to shit, but I haven't had a lot of luck with their games so far.

Devastation (PC) - Guest Post

You ever heard of this?

Didn't think so!

(Click the pics to see them in 1280x1024.)

Beyond Good & Evil (PC)

Super Adventures at Christmas 2012 - Game 7:

The last game on my Christmas list this year is Beyond Good & Evil, which wasn't quite as critically acclaimed as the other games I've played this week (and definitely didn't sell as well), but people seem to want me to play it, so I did.

I'm sick with a cold right now though and miserable so I'm likely going to be harsher on this than it deserves, especially after all the trouble I had to go through to get the PC version running right, setting CPU affinities, disabling hardware vertex whatevers etc. Plus it doesn't even support a controller on PC so I needed to set up joy2key to get around that. I'm in the mood to rant about something basically.

(Click the pics to view them big.)