Game reviews – Page 83 – Savior Gaming

Enter the Matrix

enter the matrix

Remember the early 2000’s when the Matrix ruled the world? Although I’m not the biggest fan of the movies, I do however think the games were fun as hell. For Enter The Matrix we play as Niobe and Ghost in a plot running parallel (I believe ) to Reloaded and Revolutions. Using a mix of hand to hand combat and gunplay, we get to slow time through the Matrix and take down cops, SWAT, and agents. While not perfect by any means, this game still has some really entertaining combat and graphically was pretty damn jaw dropping for the era. The driving portions can be fun but much of the time can be annoying as hell. There’s a car chase about halfway through where you have to follow a plan that almost made me rip my own hair out. Fighting is mostly button mashing and easy to master, which kind of kills any real threat the agents may have. The epitome of a review I can give this game is it’s fun but flawed but still worth checking out, especially if you loved the movies. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Top 5 PS1 RPGs, Assuming Final Fantasy Didn’t Exist.

If you were to make a list of best RPG’s for the Playstation one, or even of all time you couldn’t do it without a Final Fantasy game showing up on the list. Hell you probably would have to include at least one of them in the top 5 if we are being honest, whether it be 7 for the influence it had, or 6 because for some reason I don’t understand people think it was amazing or even 9 because it was actually as good as people think 6 or 7 was. But what would a list look like if we pretended it simply didn’t exist? Well here is my top 5 list, for once from 5-1 as if Final Fantasy just didn’t happen.

Beyond the Beyond is a title many people didn’t seem to play and as such doesn’t get much love. Its also a typical RPG in every fashion. Your home kingdom is attacked, you set out to find your dad, you flee the country, you end up as the chosen one to fight evil. But with how its presented and it turns out better than most on PS1.

Long before Persona 5 practically perfected balancing a home, school and dungeon life and before 3 introduced the concept, we were given Persona. Persona didn’t introduce the idea of an adult philosophical RPG, but it certainly was the most in depth and best done at that point. With the power of the PlayStation starting to hit its stride we were challenged to ask which one is the real you, and even shown why you don’t mess with crossing dimensions.

Grandia is one of those games I don’t even know how I ended up with. I think my mom thought hey hey this looks like the stuff Matt likes and my dear dead dad went ” hey this chick has green hair” and bought it ended up as a Christmas gift one year. Be that as it may it wasn’t long before I was calling Justin an idiot for not knowing Feena was in love with him and wondering how the hell I was supposed to win that fight against Gadwin, which it turns out I wasn’t supposed to.

This game was damn near number one, but you will see why it wasn’t. Breath of Fire 3 has multiple endings, great battles, character customization to rival many games even today with its master system and ability to learn moves and transfer them to others and it even had dragons. Add to that an amazing story about a war between dragons and a god and a possible betrayal and its no wonder this thing is remembered so fondly.

Anyone that knows me knew Suikoden was going to be number one, that being said while I prefer one over two, they are pretty much interchangeable to this spot. Both are amazing games, with amazing stories and their sprite characters hold up well even in 2018. Both involve wars in their respective kingdoms that take place in the same world, just different kingdoms. In fact you will visit the kingdom from one in 2 and many of the characters show up in multiple games in the series. Regardless collecting the 108 stars of destiny is an amazing feat to undertake that is both manageable and challenging at the same time. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crazy Taxi (Sega Forever)

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Crazy Taxi is one of those games I played as a kid and finally got around to trying out the Sega Forever version. I won’t lie, I was worried about this one. Graphically it is one of the more impressive games they released and the sound is also higher end of the stuff they have given out. So how does it hold up?

Well honestly it holds up pretty damn well. Graphically my G6 played it very well and the sound played beautifully. Both of these things actually surprised me but not as well as the actual controls worked themselves. I was expecting this to be the worst in the series of Sega Forever games so far but in fact it functioned the best, so if you are a fan of Crazy Taxi give this one a shot. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Star Fox 64

Nothing brings me back to the magic video games can bring than Star Fox 64. In the Lylat System, a far away system of anthropomorphic animals, a evil scientist named Andross is trying to take control after being banished to planet Venom. Years ago the original Star Fox team: James McCloud, Peppy Hare, and Pigma Dangar went to investigate disturbances from the planet only to be caught in a trap. Pigma betrayed them, and Peppy narrowly escaped, leaving James in Andross’s hands. It’s up to Fox and Peppy with new crew members Falco Lambardi and Slippy Toad to save the Lylat system and destroy Andross.

This underappreciated N64 gem stole my heart as a kid with it’s epic level designs, smooth flying I still haven’t felt replicated to this day. What blew my mind then was how you could forge you’re own path across the system by beating hidden objectives on stages and unlocking passage to harder worlds. Though seven stages to finish the games, there are a crap load of outcomes, including two totally different final battles (the hardest and true ending providing some damn good nightmare fuel at that too). The bosses are fun and many are pretty tricky and the unrelenting hordes of cannon fodder never gets old. If you’re older, there’s plenty of either messed up or funny things you will catch like Peppy constantly rubbing how your father is dead in your face or Slippy trying to talk trash. It’s one hell of a fun time and I give it my highest recommendations. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lethal Weapon 3

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We are once again back with Riggs and Murtaugh, and this time they are chasing an ex cop with inside knowledge of how the whole system works. This normally doesn’t seem so bad, but he is using it to steal weapons an drugs from the department and out them back on the street. He also happens to have armor piercing bullets. Murtaugh has about a week until retirement and is starting to worry he won’t quite make it.

At this point we all know the Lethal Weapon routine, and it hasn’t much changed tho weirdly the movies are all pretty solid. They have managed to use the same formula and stay interesting and fun which isn’t something easily done. The movie has some twist and turns and Riggs ends up with a new love interest which is nice. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

The Walking Dead Telltale Season 1

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Like most Telltale games such as Game of Thrones Telltales Review or Tales from the Borderlands The Walking Dead tells the story in a popular world that lets you make various choices, some will change the story but most will just only give the illusion of change. For example early on there is a choice of how to deal with a guy caught in a bear trap, but how you choose to deal with only really changes who who turns into a zombie to attack you later.

The story itself follows Lee and a little girl name Clementine as they attempt to survive in a world filled with zombies, cannibals bandits and all kinds of other dangers. The game itself is actually well done and interesting, plus for you that enjoy trophy hunting its an easy platinum/achievement points. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lethal Weapon 2 (1989)

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Lethal Weapon 2 finds Riggs and Murtaugh chasing down a South African diplomat using his diplomatic immunity to cover his crimes. While totally unrealistic is still kind of fun.

The formula has slightly changed this time around tho. Riggs while still kind of crazy seems to be no longer suicidal which while is nice for him and his character growth does make him seem crazy for no real reason at this point and now just seems like an idiot.

The movie is still fun, and the relationship between Riggs and Murtaugh is fun as always tho the tradition of Riggs having rought luck with women and Murtaugh’s family being threatened will pretty much be a staple of the movies at this point. It works but it won’t much change from here on out. The stories will change, how will change, but this this will basically stay. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Lethal Weapon (1987)

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Oh Lethal Weapon, such a classic. Also may count as a Christmas movie,seriously this thing starts out with a Christmas and even involves people sitting down for Christmas dinner. I can’t say for certain but there may be a discussion to be had on this. Any way moving on to more serious stuff. What happens when you take a veteran officer that hates being on a team and stick in with a young, possibly suicidal officer suffering from the loss of his wife that also hates being on a team? You get the Lethal Weapon franchise.

Riggs and Murtaugh will be thrown together against their will and stumble upon a huge drug trafficking ring. The movie itself is one of the more popular movies from the 80’s and the franchise continued with the last movie coming out in 98, tho a T.V. series did come out recently. The movie is great,action packed and is pretty much as 80’s action as 80’s action gets.

Lethal Weapon however does have its flaws, for example the dialogue at times feels forced and like its trying to hard and the story shouldn’t be looked at too hard, kind of like most movies from its time period. Bets wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mutant Football League

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A long long time ago when I was a little savior I got a game called Mutant League Football. No clue why my parents bought me this, hell it may have been my brothers. So we popped this weird game in, and started to play. WTF were we playing. This dude exploded. My brother passes down the sideline, makes it passed the first down marker. Runs out of bounds to avoid another big hit aaand this guy flys out into space. What..the hell is this. People are dying, landmines are exploding out of bounds is no longer safe that ref got bribed and needs to die. And this is before half time. The halftime show is you throwing exploding footballs at the marching band and yes if you kill them all you are greeted with the words “New Band Tryouts Monday.” Now many of you may have played this, others may be curious and want to play this. Well if you have a Sega Genesis you can probably find it, or there is Mutant Football League.

Mutant Football League is the spiritual successor to Mutant League Football, tho admittedly more adult to match the times. The addition of full voice ability has added some rather interesting and colorful commentary that is hilarious but crude, it also happens to be the guy from the classic NBA Jam. The game play is simplistic yet fun and the graphics while not AAA level are still nice. The strategy doesn’t come from the Madden style of football mechanics tho. Instead you have dirty plays that are of limited use you will need to time just right. And do you try to kill the opposing teams running backs to prevent them from running, or is their passing game so good you try to kill all their QB in hopes of forcing a forfeit? Or do you do some combination of it all? Either way for the price of $20 you can not go wrong and I encourage anyone to try it out. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Batman: The Telltale Series

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I was a bit skeptical going into this one, first because while I like Batman I wouldn’t consider myself a fan. I can take him or leave him. I enjoyed the 90’s cartoon and the older movies but much of the newer stuff or the comics i’m just kind of meh with. That being said, it was a free game on PSN last month (January) so really what did I have to lose?

The game itself is short, I played through the entire thing in a day while taking care of a one year old. Probably took about 10 hours, so I imagine without the one year old it can be done in about 8. Most Telltale games are short tho to be fair, this one is just a little extra short compared to say Game of Thrones Telltales Review or The walking dead (those reviews are coming soon) But you will be treated to an original story created for this series, and as far as I can find an entirely new villain. The series actually takes an entirely new spin on Batman to an extent seeming to take place in a world before the dark night knows of the Joker and just meets Catwoman. I can see how many long time fans may be turned away by this but for a casual such as myself it is actually very well done and fun to see. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.