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.

Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 4

This week on Super Adventures, I hope you don't mind that I'm still writing about all these games I played with my month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate last November, because I'm on the last part now and I'm not quitting until it's done.

Once again I should point out that I only played most of these games for an hour or so, long enough for me to get distracted by something else and turn them off, but not long enough for me to accurate assess the majority of their content or the intricacies of their gameplay. I'll also point out that these aren't just Xbox games! I played most of them on PC, and a lot of them can be played on lots of systems.

You can find part 1 here: Part 1.
Part 2 is here: Part 2.
Part 3 is here: Part 3.

Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 3

This week on Super Adventures, I'm still writing about the games I played last November when I bought a month of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. I'm up to part 3 now because it turns out you can play a lot of games in one month if you really rush. You probably shouldn't write about them though, because you likely won't have played them enough to come to grips with the gameplay or get a proper impression of the content.

But I'm doing it anyway because I want to show some games off and I'm hoping someone reading these will discover something new they end up playing and loving, even if I didn't love it myself.

You can find part 1 here: Part 1.
And part 2 is here: Part 2.

The final part is coming tomorrow!

Super Adventures with the Xbox Game Pass, Part 2

This week on Super Adventures, I feel like I should make it really clear right away that this article isn't an advert for Xbox Game Pass. It'd be nice to have the money, but it's not. Plus all the games here are available to buy elsewhere, many of them on systems other than Xbox One and PC. But last November I signed up for their three months for £1 Ultimate Game Pass deal and I played a lot of games, so I figured I might as well write a little about them.

Actually I signed up just a little too early to get the three month subscription, so I only had 30 days to play games. But they did give me a free subscription to Discord Nitro as a gift and that gave me three months of Game Pass! Or at least it should've done, but I tried to claim it just a day or so too late so I missed out on that as well. I'm so bad at video games that I only managed to get the one month when they were basically giving away six.

Oh, if you're wondering what happened to part 1, I published that last December. It was supposed to be the only part, but I had a few games left over so I figured I'd make a part 2 for you. Then I realised I still had too many games, and... to cut to the chase this is now a four part article, and you'll get the next two parts over the next two days.

Like I mentioned back in part 1, I only barely played some of these games and have no business reviewing them, but that's not going to stop me from showing off some screenshots and writing a few words underneath, same as ever. Except different.

Suikoden (PSX)

Developer:

Konami

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Release Date:

1997 (1995 in Japan)

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Systems:

PlayStation, Saturn, Windows

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm finally getting around to Suikoden, a game that's been sitting on my shelf for ages. I borrowed it from a friend a while ago and he moved away before I could give it back, so it's just been lying there ever since, unplayed. Until today!

I knew the game was an JRPG when I borrowed it (one of the earliest RPGs on the PlayStation in fact), but I had no idea what the title was about. Typically Japanese games will get an English title when they're released in the West (except for games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest which had an English title from the start), but for some reason this has remained Suikoden.

Turns out that it's loosely based on a novel of the same name. Well, that's the name it has in Japan anyway. It's actually a Chinese novel called Shui Hu Zhuan, one of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature (along with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber), and in English the title translates to... Water Margin. Probably for the best they left it as Suikoden.

VectorMan (Genesis/Mega Drive) - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, mecha-neko's back with another guest post for you! He's found a game all about robots, purple flags and twinkly stars, and some people reckon it's pretty good. You'll have to keep reading if you want to know what mecha-neko thinks of it though.

Hey everybody, guess what! It's time to play the Mega Drive exclusive VectorMan!

Developer:

BlueSky Software

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Release Date:

October 24th, 1995

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Systems:

Mega Drive/Genesis

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If you think this little fragment of the title screen is busy, believe me I'm letting you off easy. If you're really gutsy, take a look at the full animation. Be warned, it contains flashing images. (And boy howdy does it ever.) That warning goes for the rest of this post as well. Are you ready?

Riot Zone (TurboGrafx-CD)

Developer:

Westone

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Release Date:

1993 (1992 in Japan)

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Systems:

TurboGrafx-CD, Arcade (kind of)

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This week on Super Adventures we're going to the Riot Zone, on the TurboGrafx-CD / PC Engine CD-ROM².

Though it's also known by another name, as it started life as an coin-op called Riot City. The licensing agreement that developer Westone had with original publisher Sega said they owned the rights to the game, but not the characters, bosses or names, so when they ported it to Hudson Soft's console they had to give it a makeover and a new title. It's a bit weird they didn't just port it to Sega's Mega Drive / Genesis instead and save themselves the work, but I suppose they must have had their reasons.

The game never got a European release in either form, but the console version did reach America, so there'll be nice English cutscenes for me to completely understand. Well I'll be able to read the text at least.